U;RS.TYOF 

SAN 


FROM    THE     LIBRARY    OF 

TRUE  &   FRANK   STERN 


INDUSTRY    IN    ENGLAND 


INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 


HISTORICAL     OUTLINES 


BY 


H.  DE  B.  GIBBINS,  M.A.,  D.LiTT. 


SOMETIME  UNIVERSITY  (CORDBN)  PRIZEMAN  IN  POLITICAL  ECONOMY,  OXFORD  I 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  INDUSTRIAL  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND"  AND 

"THE  HISTORY  OF  COMMERCE  IN  EUROPE" 


WITH    MAPS,    TABLES,    AND   A   PLAN 


SECOND   EDITION 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1898 


TO    MY    WIFE 


OF  INDUSTRIAL  HISTORY  AND 
SOCIAL  REFORM. 

"...  The  Sibyl  offers  her  books,  in  which  the  future 
is  forecast,  to  the  Roman  statesman,  according  to  the 
legend.  The  price  is  refused  twice,  and,  after  each  repulse, 
she  destroys  irrevocably  one  of  the  volumes,  demanding 
the  same  price  for  the  third.  TJiis  is  what  Bacon  called 
tJie  wisdom  of  the  ancients,  and  the  moral  is  plain." 

JAMES  E.  THOROLD  ROGERS. 


PREFACE 

IN  1890  the  author  published  a  small  book,  entitled  The 
Industrial  History  of  England,  which  met  with  a  some- 
what undeserved  success,  and  has  rapidly  gone  through 
several  large  editions.  It  was  described  in  the  first  preface 
as  "  an  attempt  to  relate  in  a  short,  concise,  and  simple  form 
the  main  outlines  of  England's  economic  and  industrial 
history,"  meant  "  to  serve  as  an  introduction  to  a  fuller 
study  of  the  subject,  and  as  a  preliminary  sketch  which 
the  reader  can  afterwards,  if  he  wishes,  fill  in  for  himself 
from  larger  volumes ; "  and  it  seems  to  have  attained  its 
object  of  awakening  popular  interest,  to  some  extent,  in  a 
very  important  branch  of  national  history.  But  it  had  all 
the  faults  of  a  brief  outline,  and  contained  errors  of  fact 
and  of  expression  which  no  one  has  regretted  more  sincerely 
than  the  author.  It  has  therefore  been  my  endeavour,  in 
this  larger  work,  to  produce  a  History  of  Industry  of  a  more 
satisfactory  character,  while  at  the  same  time  retaining  the 
essential  features  that  characterised  the  earlier  effort.  As 
before,  I  have  attempted,  as  far  as  possible,  in  the  brief 
limits  of  a  work  like  this,  to  connect  economic  and  industrial 
questions  with  social,  political,  and  military  movements, 
since  only  in  some  such  mutual  relation  can  historical 
events  obtain  their  full  significance. 

The  Industrial  History  of  England  has  been  taken,  on 
the  whole,  as  the  basis  of  this  book,  and  the  arrangement 

b  ™ 


viii  PREFACE 

of  periods  and  chapters  has  been  but  slightly  altered  ;  but 
the  original  book  has  been  entirely  re-written,  and  so  much 
new  matter  has  been  added  that  the  present  volume  is 
quite  three  times  the  size  of  the  first  essay.  Fresh  maps 
have  been  drawn,  new  tables  of  statistics  added,  and  foot- 
notes have  been  given  for  every  statement  of  any  im- 
portance. 

The  first  period  also,  up  to  the  Norman  conquest, 
contains  entirely  new  matter,  involving  a  certain  amount 
of  original  work.  For  some  time  it  has  appeared  to  me 
that  the  results  of  arch  Ecological  and  antiquarian  research 
into  the  pre-bistoric  period  have  not  been  sufficiently 
utilised  in  dealing  with  our  industrial  history,  and  that  the 
origin  of  the  manor,  in  especial,  derives  added  light  from 
these  investigations.  It  has  therefore  been  my  endeavour 
to  weave  into  the  story  of  industrial  progress  several  of  the 
results  arrived  at  by  investigators  of  pre -historic  conditions, 
believing,  as  I  do,  that  the  many  centuries  of  industrial 
human  life  which  elapsed  before  our  written  history  began 
must  have  left  upon  our  nation  some  traces  of  their 
course.  At  the  same  time,  I  have  not  wished  to  emphasise 
the  pre-historic  period  unduly,  and  have  therefore  confined 
the  remarks  upon  it  to  a  very  limited  space.  But  I  hope 
that  the  "  survey  of  the  origin  of  the  manor,"  in  §  32,  may 
be  some  contribution  to  the  discussion  of  the  subject. 

Throughout  the  book  I  have  tried  to  review  the  in- 
dustrial life  of  England  as  a  whole,  and  to  present  a  general 
survey  of  it  throughout  its  gradual  development.  In  this 
respect  Industry  in  England  differs  from  most  works  of 
the  kind,  for  they  have  generally  been  devoted  either  to 
some  special  period  or  some  special  aspect,  or  have  dealt 


PREFACE  ix 

with  industry  only  as  a  branch  of  the  national  commerce.  I 
have  endeavoured  to  give  full  weight  to  the  views  of  other 
writers,  especially  on  disputed  points,1  but  have  also  indi- 
cated my  own  (though  with  considerable  diffidence)  where 
there  seemed  reason  to  differ  from  them.  I  do  not  suppose 
that  I  have  succeeded  in  being  impartial,  for,  though 
impartiality  is  the  ideal,  it  is  also  the  will  o'  the  wisp  of 
the  historian,  and  generally  deserts  him  when  he  needs  it 
most ;  but  I  have  at  least  endeavoured  to  give  reasons  for 
my  conclusions.  And  while  in  some  points  I  differ,  no 
one  admires  more  than  myself  the  work  of  such  historians 
as  Dr  Cunningham  and  Professor  Ashley,  whose  names  I 
venture  specially  to  mention,  because  I  wish  gratefully  to 
acknowledge  the  magnitude  of  the  help  rendered  to  me,  as 
to  all  students,  by  their  recent  contributions  to  industrial 
history.  My  obligations  to  them  are,  I  trust,  acknowledged 
as  often  as  possible  in  the  footnotes,  but  mere  references  of 
that  kind  cannot  convey  by  any  means  adequately  the 
extent  to  which  a  student  like  myself  has  benefited  from 
their  researches. 

As  regards  the  footnotes  generally,  every  endeavour  has 
been  made  to  acknowledge  all  the  sources  which  have  been 
consulted,  and  any  omission  in  this  respect  the  author 
sincerely  regrets.  Considerable  difficulty  was  occasioned 
by  my  change  of  residence  during  the  completion  of  the 
book,  and  a  consequent  compulsory  recourse  to  different 
libraries;  and  the  indulgence  of  readers  and  critics  is 
therefore  asked  for  any  omission  or  error  thereby  caused. 
It  might  also  be  added  that  this  book  has  been  written  in 

1  As,  e.g.,  The  Peasants'  Revolt,  the  condition  of  the  Labourer  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  the  Poor  Law  of  Elizabeth,  the  Assessment  of  Wages, 
&c.,  &c. 


x  PREFACE 

the  intervals  of  a  very  busy  life,  and  out  of  reach  of  any 
special  collection  of  works  on  industrial  subjects  or  of  any 
of  the  greater  libraries  of  the  kingdom. 

I  cannot  conclude  without  paying  a  tribute  to  the 
memory  of  the  late  Professor  J.  E.  Thorold  Rogers,  to 
whom  I  showed,  as  a  mere  beginner  in  his  special  subject, 
the  proofs  of  the  first  few  chapters  of  the  little  book  (The 
Industrial  History  of  England}  from  which  this  larger 
volume  has  developed.  To  his  kindly  encouragement  and  to 
the  inspiring  teaching  of  his  economic  works,  I  owe  what- 
ever knowledge  I  possess  of  that  side  of  our  national 
history  which  is  of  such  vast  importance  to  a  citizen  of 
modern  England. 

H.  DE  B.  GIBBINS. 

LIVERPOOL,  SEPTEMBER  1896. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 

THE  very  favourable  reception  and  rapid  sale  of  this  book 
have  necessitated  the  issue  of  a  second  edition  within  a  few 
months  of  the  publication  of  the  first.  Only  a  few  verbal 
corrections  have  been  made,  but  I  should  like  to  quote 
the  following  explanation  from  the  preface  to  the  fifth 
edition  of  my  earlier  work,  the  Industrial  History  of 
England : 

"  It  has  been  said  that  I  write  with  a  prejudice  against 
the  owners  of  land :  but  this  is  not  the  case.  The  landed 
gentry  of  England  happen,  for  some  centuries,  to  have  held 
the  predominant  power  in  the  State  and  in  society,  and 
used  it,  not  unnaturally,  in  many  cases  to  further  their  own 
interests.  It  is  the  duty  of  an  historian  to  point  this  out, 
but  it  need  not,  therefore,  be  thought  that  he  has  any 
special  bias  against  the  class.  Any  other  class  would  have 
certainly  done  the  same,  as,  for  instance,  mill-owners  did 
among  their  own  employes  at  the  beginning  of  this  century, 
and  as,  in  all  probability,  the  working-classes  will  do,  when 
a  further  extension  of  democratic  government  shall  have 
given  them  the  opportunity.  It  is  a  fault  of  human  nature 
that  it  can  rarely  be  trusted  with  irresponsible  power,  and 
unless  the  influence  of  one  class  of  society  is  counterbalanced 


xii     PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 

more  or  less  by  that  of  another,  there  will  always  be  a 
tendency  to  some  injustice.  I  trust  that  my  readers  will 
bear  this  in  mind  when  reading  the  following  pages,  and 
will  believe  that  I  intend  no  unfairness  to  the  landed  gentry 
of  England,  who  have  done  much  to  promote  the  glory  and 
stability  of  their  country." 

H.  DE  B.  GIBBINS. 


LIVERPOOL,  JULY  1897. 


CONTENTS 


PERIOD  I 

EARLY  HISTORY,  FROM  PRE-HISTORIC  TIMES  TO  THE 
NORMAN  CONQUEST 

CHAPTER  I 

PRK-ROMAN   BRITAIN 

SECTION  PAGE 

1.  Industrial  History  ....... 

2.  The  English  Nation  and  Country  .....  3 

3.  The  Aboriginal  Inhabitants  of  Britain       ....  5 

4.  Their  Social  and  Economic  Condition        ....  7 

5.  The  Bronze  Age  and  the  Celtic  Immigration         ...  8 

6.  Resume :  The  Peoples  of  Early  Britain      ...  10 

7.  Their  Social  and  Economic  Condition        .  .  .  .10 

8.  The  Celts  in  the  time  of  Pytheas  .  ....          11 

9.  Foreign  Trade  of  Britain    .  .  .  .  .  .14 

10.  Internal  Trade  :  Roads  and  Rivers  .  .  .  .16 

11.  Physical  Aspect  of  Pre-Roman  Britain      .  .  .  .17 

CHAPTER  II 

ROMAN  BRITAIN 

12.  The  Roman  Occupation      ......  21 

13.  Roman  Roads         .......  22 

14.  Roman  Towns  in  Britain   ......  23 

15.  The  Romans  and  Agriculture         .....  25 

16.  Celtic  and  Non-Roman  Influence  in  Agriculture   ...  27 

17.  Commerce  and  Industry  in  Roman  Britain           ...  31 

CHAPTER  III 

THE    SAXON    PERIOD 

18.  The  Saxon  Invasions          ......  84 

19.  The  Saxon  Village  and  its  Inhabitants      ....  37 

20.  Village  Life  .......  38 

21.  Methods  of  Cultivation      ......  40 

MB 


xiv  CONTENTS 

SECTIOK  PAGE 

22.  Isolation  of  Villages.     Crafts  and  Trades.     Markets                     .  41 

23.  Foreign  Commerce  and  the  Danes              .            ...  43 

24.  Summary  of  Trade  and  Industry  in  the  Saxon  Period       .            .  46 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE  MANOR  AND  THE  MANORIAL  SYSTEM 

25.  The  Interest  of  the  Question  as  to  the  Origin  of  the  Manor          .  47 

26.  The  Mark  Theory  and  the  Manor  .....  48 

27.  Criticisms  of  the  Mark  Theory       .....  49 

28.  VinogradofFs  Evidence  on  the  Manorial  System    ...  52 

29.  Evidence  from  Manorial  Courts  and  Customs        ...  55 

30.  The  "Customary"  Tenants           .....  56 
81.  The  Evidence  of  Village  Communities       ....  57 
32.  A  Survey  of  the  Origin  of  the  Manor         ....  58 
83.  The  Feudal  System            ......  60 


PERIOD  II 

FROM  THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST  TO  THE  REIGN  OF 
HENRY  III 

(1066-1216  A.D.) 
CHAPTER  V 

DOMESDAY    BOOK    AND  THE  MANORS 

34.  The  Survey  ordered  by  William  I.             ....  65 

35.  The  Population  given  by  Domesday          ....  66 

36.  The  Wealth  of  various  Districts     .....  68 

37.  The  Manors  and  Lords  of  the  Manors        ....  70 

38.  The  Inhabitants  of  the  Manor       .....  71 

39.  The  Condition  of  these  Inhabitants  .  .  .73 

40.  Services  due  to  the  Lord  from  his  Tenants  in  Villeinage  .            .  74 

41.  Money  Payments  and  Rents       '    .  .  .  .  .74 

42.  Free  Tenants.     Soke-men  ......  75 

43.  The  Distinction  between  Free  and  Unfree  Tenants            .            .  76 

44.  Illustrations  of  Manors  from  Domesday    ....  78 

45.  Cuxham  Manor  in  the  Eleventh  and  Thirteenth  Centuries            .  79 

46.  Description  of  an  Eleventh  Century  Village        ...  80 

47.  The  Decay  of  the  Manorial  System            ....  84 


48.  The  Origin  of  the  Towns    ......          86 

49.  Rise  of  Towns  in  England  .....          87 

50.  Towns  in  Domesday  ......          88 


CONTENTS  xv 

nCTIOK  FAOB 

51.  Special  Privileges  of  Towns  .....  89 

52.  How  the  Towns  obtained  their  Charters    ....  90 

53.  Th«  Gilds  and  the  Towns.     Various  kinds  of  Gilds  .  .  91 

54.  How  the  Merchant  Gilds  helped  the  Growth  of  Towns      .  .  93 

55.  How  the  Craft  Gilds  helped  Industry        ....  94 

56.  Life  in  the  Towns  of  this  time       .....  96 

CHAPTER  VII 

MANUFACTURES  AND  TRADE  :   ELEVENTH  TO  THIRTEENTH  CENTURIES 

57.  Economic  Effects  of  the  Feudal  System     ....          98 

58.  Foreign  Trade.     The  Crusades       .....        100 

59.  The  Trading  Clauses  in  the  Great  Charter  .  .  .101 

60.  The  Jews  in  England          .  .  .  .  .  .103 

61.  Manufactures  in  this  Period :  Flemish  Weavers   .  .  .         104 

62.  Economic  Appearance  of  England  in  this  Period.     Population. 

The  North  and  South    ......         106 

63.  General  Condition  of  the  Period    .  108 


PERIOD  III 

FROM  THE  THIRTEENTH  TO  THE  END  OF  THE 
FIFTEENTH  CENTURY,  INCLUDING  THE  GREAT  PLAGUE 

(1216-1500) 
CHAPTER  VIII 

AGRICULTURE  IN   MEDIEVAL  ENGLAND 

64.  Introductory.     Rise  of  a  Wage-earning  Class        .  .  .        Ill 

65.  Agriculture  the  Chief  Occupation  of  the  People    .  .  .         112 

66.  Methods  of  Cultivation.     The  Capitalist  Landlord  and  his  Bailiff. 

The  "Stock  and  Land  "Lease  .....  113 

67.  The  Tenants'  Communal  Land  and  Closes             •            .            .  115 

68.  Ploughing  ........  116 

69.  Stock,  Pigs,  and  Poultry   ......  116 

70.  Sheep          ........  117 

1.  Increase  of  Sheep-farming  ......        118 

2.  Consequent  Increase  of  Enclosures  .  .  .        119 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE   WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES 

73.  England's  Monopoly  of  Wool         .....        120 

74.  Wool  and  Politics  .  .  .  .  .  .  .121 

75.  Prices  and  Brands  of  English  Wool  .  .  .  .124 

76.  English  Manufactures        ......         125 


xvi  CONTENTS 


77.  Foreign  Manufacture  of  Fine  Goods          ...  126 

78.  Flemish  Settlers  teach  the  English  "Weavers.     Norwich  127 

79.  The  Worsted  Industry      ......  129 

80.  Gilds  in  the  Cloth  Trade  ......  130 

81.  The  Dyeing  of  Cloth         ......  131 

82.  The  Great  Transition  in  English  Industry           .            .            .  181 

83.  The  Manufacturing  Class  and  Politics      .  .  .  .132 

CHAPTER  X 

THE  TOWNS,   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,    AND  FAIRS 

84.  The  Chief  Manufacturing  Towns  .....  134 

85.  Staple  Towns  and  the  Merchants             ....  135 

86.  Markets     ........  138 

87.  The  Great  Fairs    .......  140 

88.  The  Fairs  of  Winchester  and  Stourbridge  .  .  .142 

89.  English  Mediaeval  Ports   ......  144 

90.  The  Temporary  Decay  of  Manufacturing  Towns  .            .            .  145 

91.  Growth  of  Industrial  Villages.     The  Germs  of  the  Modern  Fac- 

tory System        .......        146 

CHAPTER  XI 

THE  GREAT  PLAGUE  AND   ITS  ECONOMIC   EFFECTS 

92.  Material  Progress  of  the  Country.             ....  14& 

93.  Social  Changes.     The  Villeins  and  the  Wage-paid  Labourers     .  150 

94.  The  Famine  and  the  Plague          .....  151 

95.  The  Effects  of  the  Plague  on  Wages         .  .  .  .152 

96.  Prices  of  Provisions          ......  155 

97.  Effects  of  the  Plague  upon  the  Landowners          .            .            .  156 

98.  Large  and  Small  Holdings :  the  Yeomen             .            .            .  157 

99.  The  Statute  of  Quia  Emptores      .....  158 

100.  The  Emancipation  of  the  Villeins  .  .  .  .159 

CHAPTER  XII 

THE  PEASANTS'  BEVOLT  OF  1381,  AND  THE  SUBSEQUENT  CONDITION  OF  THE 
WORKING  CLASSES 

101.  The  Place  of  the  Revolt  in  English  History        .  .  .161 

102.  New  Social  Doctrines       ......         162 

103.  The  Coming  of  the  Friars.     Wiklif         .  .  .  .163 

104.  The  Renewed  Exactions  of  the  Landowners         .  .  .         164 

105.  Social  and  Political  Questions      .....         165 

106.  The  Mutteriags  of  a  Storm  .....         167 

107.  The  Storm  Breaks  Out     ......         168 

108.  The  Result  of  the  Revolt  .....        170 

109.  The  Condition  of  the  English  Labourer   ....        172 

110.  Purchasing  Power  of  Wages         .  .  .  .  .175- 

111.  Drawbacks  .  .        17r 


CONTENTS  xvii. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE   AGES 

81CIIOM  FAOR 

112.  The  Nobility        .....  .180 

113.  The  Country  Gentry         .  ...        182 

114.  The  Yeomen          .......         183 

115.  Agriculture  and  Sheep-fanning    .  .  .  .  .184 

116.  The  Stock  and  Land  Lease  .....         18& 

117.  The  Towns  and  Town  Constitutions        .  .  .  .187 

118.  The  Gilds  and  Municipal  Institutions      .  .  .  .189 

119.  The  Decay,  of  Certain  Towns        .  .  .  .  .190 

120.  The   Commercial    and    Industrial    Changes  of  the    Fifteenth 

Century  .......        192. 

121.  The  Close  of  the  Middle  Ages      .....        194 


PERIOD  IV 

FROM  THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY  TO  THE  EVE  OF  THE 
INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION 

(1509-1716) 
CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII.,  AND  ECONOMIC  CHANGES  IN  THE 
SIXTEENTH  CENTUBY 

122.  Henry  VIII. 's  Wastefulness         .....        199 

123.  The  Dissolution  of  the  Monasteries          ....        202 

124.  Results  of  the  Suppression  .....        203 

125.  Pauperism  .......        205 

126.  The  Issuing  of  Base  Coin ......        206 

127.  The  Confiscation  of  the  Gild  Lands         .  .  .  .207 

128.  Bankruptcy  and  Rapacity  of  Edward  VI. 's  Government  .        209 

129.  The  Agrarian  Situation     .  .  .  .  .  .211 

130.  The  Enclosures  of  the  Sixteenth  Century  .  .  .        213 

131.  Evidence  of  the  Results  of  Enclosing       ....        215 
182.  Other  Economic  Changes.     The  Finances  .  .  .        218 
133.  Summary  of  the  Changes  of  the  Sixteenth  Century         .  .        220- 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE   GROWTH   Or  FOREIGN   TRADE 

184.  The  Expansion  of  Commerce.     The  New  Spirit  .  .  .223 

185.  Foreign  Trade  in  the  Fifteenth  Century  .  .  .  .224 

136.  The  Venetian  Fleet  ......        225- 

137.  The  Hanseatic  League's  Station  in  London          .  .  .        227 


xviii  CONTENTS 

SECTION  PAGE 

138.  Trade  with  Flanders.     Antwerp  in  the  Fifteenth  and  Sixteenth 

Centuries            .......  228 

139.  The  Decay  of  Antwerp  and  Rise  of  London  as  the  Western 

Emporium          .......  230 

140.  The  Merchants  and  Sea-Captains  of  the  Elizabethan  Age  in  the 

New  World 231 

141.  Remarks  on  the  Signs  and  Causes  of  the  Expansion  of  Trade     .  232 

CHAPTER  XVI 

ELIZABETHAN   ENGLAND 

142.  Prosperity  and  Pauperism                                                              .  234 

143.  The  Restoration  of  the  Currency .            ....  235 

144.  The  Growth  of  Manufactures        .....  236 

145.  Monopolies  of  Manufacturing  Towns        ....  239 

146.  Exports  of  Manufactures  and  Foreign  Trade        ...  240 

147.  The  Flemish  Immigration            .....  241 

148.  Monopolies            .......  242 

149.  The  Revival  of  the  Craft  Gilds    .....  246 

150.  Agriculture           .......  247 

151.  Social  Comforts     .......  250 

152.  The  Condition  of  the  Labourers  .....  251 

153.  Assessment  of  Wages  by  Justices.     The  First  Poor  Law             .  253 

154.  The  Working  of  the  Assessment  System              .            .            .  255 

155.  The  Law  of  Apprenticeship          .....  259 

156.  The  Elizabethan  Poor  Law           .....  260 

157.  Population           .......  263 

CHAPTER  XVII 

PROGRESS  OF  AGRICTTLTURE  IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH   AND  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURIES 

158.  Resume  of  Progress  since  Thirteenth  Century      .            .            .  265 

159.  Progress  in  James  I.'s  Reign.     Influence  of  Landlords    .             .  266 

160.  Writers  on  Agriculture.     Improvements.     Game            .            .  267 

161.  Drainage  of  the  Fens        ......  268 

162.  Rise  of  Price  of  Corn  and  of  Rent  .  .  .  .269 

163.  Special  Features  of  the   Eighteenth   Century.     Popularity  of 

Agriculture         .......  270 

164.  Improvements  of  Cattle,  and  in  the  Productiveness  of  Land. 

Statistics            .......  271 

165.  Survivals  of  Primitive  Culture.     Common  Fields            .            .  273 

166.  Great  Increase  of  Enclosures        .....  274 

167.  Benefits  of  Enclosures  as  Compared  with  the  Old  Common  Fields  275 

168.  The  Decay  of  the  Yeomanry        .....  276 

169.  Causes  of  the  Decay  of  the  Yeomanry      ....  278 

170.  The  Rise  in  Rent .......  279 

171.  The  Fall  in  Wages           ......  280 


CONTENTS  xix 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

COMMERCE   AND   WAR   IN   THE   SEVENTEENTH   AND   EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURIES 

SECTIOK  PAGB 

172.  England  a  Commercial  Power       .....  284 

173.  The  Beginnings  of  the  Struggle  with  Spain         .            .            .  285 

174.  Cromwell's  Commercial  Wars  and  the  Navigation  Acts  .            ,  286 

175.  The  Wars  of  William  III.  and  of  Anne   .  .  .  .288 

176.  English  Colonies  .......  290 

177.  Further  Wars  with  France  and  Spain      .  .  .  .291 

178.  The  Struggle  for  India     ......  293 

179.  The  Conquest  of  Canada  .            .....  295 

180.  Survey  of  Commercial  Progress  during  these  Wars          .            .  296 

181.  Commercial  Events  of  the  Seventeenth  Century  (Banking — the 

Bank  of  England, 'National  Debt,  Restoration  of  the  Currency)  299 

182.  Other  Important  Commercial  Events  (Darien  Scheme,  Union  of 

England  and  Scotland,  Methuen  Treaty,  Speculation  and  the 
South  Sea  Bubble)         .  .  .  .  .801 

CHAPTER  XIX 

MANUFACTURES  AND  MINING 

183.  Circumstances  Favourable  to  English  Manufactures        .            .  305 

184.  Wool  Trade.     Home  Manufactures.     Dyeing      .            .            .  305 

185.  Other  Influences  Favourable  to  England.     The  Huguenot  Im- 

migration          .......  307 

186.  Distribution  of  the  Cloth  Trade  .....  308 

187.  Coal  Mines            .......  310 

188.  Development  of   Coal    Trade:    Seventeenth    and    Eighteenth 

Centuries            .......  311 

189.  The  Iron  Trade    .......  312 

190.  Pottery     ........  314 

191.  Other  Mining  Industries .  .  .  .  .  .315 

192.  The  Close  of  the  Period  of  Manual  Industries                  .  816 


PERIOD     V 

THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  AND  MODERN 
ENGLAND 

CHAPTER  XX 

THE   BVE   OF  THE   REVOLUTION 

193.  Industry  and  Politics.     Landowners  and  Merchant  Princes  .        821 

194.  The  Coming  of  the  Capitalists     .  .  .  .  .324 

195.  The  Class  of  Small  Manufacturers  .  .  .  .326 

196.  The  Condition  of  the  Manufacturing  Population  .  .        827 


LIST    OF    MAPS 

1.  PHYSICAL  ASPECT  OF  ENGLAND  IN  SAXON  AND  NORMAN 

TIMES         .....  To  face  page  65 

2.  PLAN  OF  A  TYPICAL  VILLAGE  .           .          .       On  page  84 

3.  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH  IN  ENGLAND  IN  1503  To  face  page  196 

4.  THE  DISTRIBUTION  OF  WEALTH  IN  ENGLAND  IN  1636          „        263 

5.  INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND,   1700-1750  (SHOWING   POPU- 

LATION AND  MANUFACTURES)  „        350 

6.  INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND  IN  1895  (SHOWING  POPULATION 

AND  MANUFACTURES)          .  .  .  „        454 


PERIOD    I 

EARLY  HISTORY,  FROM  PRE-HISTORIC  TIMES 
TO  THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST 


THE 

HISTORY  OF  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  I 

PBE-ROMAN     BRITAIN 

§  1.  Industrial  History. 

THE  history  of  a  nation's  industry  must  necessarily  date 
back  to  pre-historic  times  and  to  the  earliest  stages  of  national 
life.  For  the  history  of  industry  is  the  history  of  civilisation, 
and  a  nation's  economic  development  must,  to  a  large  extent, 
underlie  and  influence  the  course  of  its  social  and  political 
progress.  Hence  it  has  been  aptly  remarked  l  that  there  is 
no  fact  in  a  nation's  history  but  has  some  traceable  bearing 
on  the  industry  of  the  time,  and  no  fact  that  can  be 
altogether  ignored  as  if  it  were  unconnected  with  industrial 
life.  "  The  progress  of  mankind  is  written  in  the  history 
of  its  tools  ;  "  2  and  to  the  economic  historian  the  transition 
from  the  axehead  of  stone  to  that  of  bronze  is  quite  as 
important  as  a  change  of  dynasty  ;  and  certainly,  in  its  way, 
it  is  as  serious  an  industrial  revolution  as  the  change  from 
the  hand-loom  to  machinery.  There  are,  indeed,  few  studies 
more  interesting  than  that  in  which  we  watch  how  a  nation 
developes  in  economic  progress,  passing  from  one  stage  of 
industrial  activity  to  another,  till  at  length  it  reaches  the 
varied  and  multitudinous  complexity  of  toil  that  forms  our 
present  system  of  industry  and  commerce.  During  this 
progress  the  necessities  of  its  trade  and  manufactures  bring 
it  into  contact  with  the  politics  of  other  nations  in  a  manifold 
and  often  a  curious  variety  of  ways,  and  thus  political  history 
gains  fresh  interest  and  a  clearer  light  from  causes  which,  in 
themselves,  are  often  neglected  as  obscure  or  insignificant. 

§  2.   The  English  Nation  and  Country. 
Now,  in  dealing  with  the  history  of  England,  or  indeed 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  I.  p.  7. 

2  Walpole,  Land  of  Home  Rule,  p.  15.  * 


4  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

with  that  of  any  other  nation,  there  are  two  fixed  data  which 
must  always  be  considered  first,  namely,  the  people  and  their 
country.  So  much  has  been  said  about  the  special  fitness 
of  the  people  and  country  of  England  for  the  pursuits  of 
industry  and  commerce  that  we  are  apt  to  forget  that  this 
fitness  has  only  been  discovered  in  very  recent  times,  and 
that,  till  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  the  English  were  far  behind 
several  other  European  nations,  if  not  in  economic  develop- 
ment, at  any  rate  in  economic  supremacy.  It  is,  in  fact, 
useful  to  remind  ourselves  that  England  is  not  inhabited  by  a 
naturally  inventive  nation,1  and  that  we  owe  most  of  our  pro- 
gress in  the  arts  and  manufactures  to  foreign  influences.  The 
causes,  moreover,  of  English  supremacy  and  commerce  in  the 
nineteenth  century  are  almost  as  recent  as  that  supremacy  it- 
self, and,  with  one  great  exception — the  application  of  steam- 
power  to  industry — reside  more  in  the  natural  advantages 
of  the  country  than  in  the  natural  ingenuity  of  the  nation. 

But  since  the  dawn  of  history  both  people  and  country 
have  undergone  many  and  remarkable  changes,  and,  indeed, 
few  things  are  more  essential  to  an  adequate  understanding 
of  the  English  people  and  their  economic  progress  than  a 
recognition  of  the  fact  that  they  consist  of  an  exceedingly 
mixed  population.  Like  a  palimpsest  which  has  been  used 
over  and  over  again,  the  general  surface  of  English  char- 
acteristics presents  to  the  historical  inquirer,  in  a  more  or 
less  blurred  condition,  the  traces  of  Teutonic,  Roman,  Celtic, 
and  even  pre-historic  races,  who  have  each  contributed  their 
quota  to  the  economic  progress  of  the  nation  and  to  the 
physical  peculiarities  of  the  individual.  To  take  but  one 
instance,  the  agricultural  development  of  this  country  was 
for  centuries  profoundly  affected  by  the  manorial  system, 
and  in  the  village  community  upon  which  this  was  based 
we  can  see  survivals  of  each  of  the  waves  of  conquest  which 
passed  over  the  land,  while  beneath  and  below  them  all 
remain,  as  crystallised  relics  of  a  pre-historic  age,  strange 
customs  and  habits  of  a  primitive  race  that  lead  us  back  in 
thought  to  the  earliest  dawn  of  civilised  institutions. 

It  will  not,  therefore,  be  altogether  out  of  place  if  we 
attempt  to  obtain  some  slight  idea  of  those  early  races  who 
1  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.  of  History,  ch.  xiii. 


PRE-ROMAN  BRITAIN  5 

inhabited  England  long  before  it  had  gained  its  present 
name,  or  had  even  received  its  Romanised-Celtic  appellation 
of  Britannia.  For  whole  races  of  mankind  are  rarely,  if 
ever,  entirely  annihilated  ;  "  the  blood  of  the  conquerors 
must  in  time  become  mixed  with  that  of  the  conquered  ; 
and  the  preservation  of  men  for  slaves  and  women  for  wives 
will  always  insure  the  continued  existence  of  the  inferior 
race,  however  much  it  may  lose  of  its  original  appearance, 
manners,  or  language." l  The  pre-historic  populations  of 
the  British  Isles  left  traces  for  centuries  upon  our  agricul- 
tural industry  and  village  customs,  so  that  the  more  detailed 
study  and  wider  recognition  of  their  survivals  into  modern 
times  are  not  merely  the  idle  interest  of  an  unscientific 
curiosity.  The  strange  persistence  of  early  or  inferior  races 
and  institutions  amid  the  most  devastating  wars  and  most 
overwhelming  invasions  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
features  of  history  ; 2  and  the  intelligent  recognition  of  this 
fact  in  recent  times  has  done  much  to  enlarge  and  correct 
our  conceptions  of  human  progress.  Many  an  agricultural 
labourer  of  to-day  shows  in  the  cast  of  his  features  and  shape 
of  his  head  a  continuity  of  descent  from  the  pre-historic  inhabi- 
tants of  his  native  land  beside  which  the  pedigree  traced  from 
A  Norman  noble  fades  into  the  insignificance  of  modernity. 

§  3.   The  Aboriginal  Inhabitants  of  Britain. 

Now,  at  the  earliest  period  to  which  the  written  records 
of  classical  writers  take  us  back,  there  seems  to  have  been 
living  in  Britain  a  population  originating  from  no  less  than 
three  stocks.  "  The  civilised  Gauls  had  settled  on  the 
eastern  coasts  before  the  Roman  invasions  began,  and  were 
to  spread  across  the  island  before  the  Roman  conquest  was 
complete.  The  Celts  of  an  older  migration  were  established 
towards  the  north  and  west,  and  ruled  from  the  Gaulish 
settlements  as  far  as  the  Irish  Sea  ;  and  here  and  there  we 
find  traces  of  still  older  peoples  who  are  best  known  as 
the  tomb-builders  and  the  constructors  of  the  pre-historic 
monuments."8  Of  these  three  stocks  the  aboriginal  was 

1  Elton,  Origins,  ch.  i.          3  Cf.  Dawkins,  Early  Man  in  Britain,  p.  331. 
3  Elton,  Origins,  p.  93. 


6  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

that  of  the  Iberians  or  Ivernians,  the  oldest  Neolithic  race 
known  in  Europe,  a  small,  dark-haired, dolichocephalic  people. 
These  were  already  retreating  before  an  immigration  of 
Celtic  peoples,  but  seem  to  have  also  amalgamated  with  the 
immigrating  race  to  a  considerable  extent,  and,  being  thus 
preserved  from  absolute  extinction,  have  survived  to  our 
own  day.1  These  aborigines  were  known  to  the  Romans 
under  the  name  of  Silures,2  and,  like  the  Goidels  of  the 
first  Celtic  immigration,3  were  in  the  Neolithic  stage  of 
culture.  Their  industry  and  mode  of  life  has  been  recon- 
structed for  us  with  marvellous  care  and  fidelity  by  the 
labours  of  Professor  Boyd  Dawkins.4  He  concludes  that  the 
population  was  probably  large,  and  divided  into  tribal  com- 
munities, who  certainly  possessed  fixed  habitations — not 
only  caves,  but  log-huts  and  wooden  houses — and,  though 
living  principally  on  their  flocks  and  herds  and  the  game 
of  the  vast  forests,  they  were  by  no  means  unacquainted 
with  the  arts  of  agriculture.  The  implements  by  which. 
their  building  and  agricultural  operations  were  carried 
on  were  only  of  stone,  but  they  seemed  to  have  been  used 
very  skilfully.  Indeed,  the  use  of  the  stone  axe  marks  a 
distinct  epoch  in  the  history  of  industry,  for  by  it  man  was 
enabled  "to  win  his  greatest  victory  over  nature,"  by  cut- 
ting down  the  trees  of  the  vast  primeval  forests  in  order  to 
make  a  clearing  for  tilling  the  ground  and  building  his 
house.  The  arts  of  spinning  and  weaving  5  were  also  intro- 
duced into  Europe  and  Britain  in  the  Neolithic  age,  and 
were  preserved,  in  the  more  remote  districts,  with  but  little 
variation  until  the  quite  modern  introduction  of  more 
complicated  machinery.  Flint-mining  and  pottery-making 
were  also  carried  on,  and  the  art  of  boat-building6  had  pro- 
ceeded sufficiently  to  allow  of  voyages  being  made  [in 
canoes]  from  France  to  Britain  and  from  Britain  to  Ireland. 
It  is  also  evident  that  the  Neolithic  tribes  of  Britain  had 

1  Of.  Rhys,  Celtic  Britain,  p.  275. — "  Skulls  are  harder  than  consonants 
and  races  lurk  behind  when  languages  slink  away.     The  lineal  descendants 
of  the  Neolithic  aborigines  are  ever  among  us,  possibly  even  those  of  a 
still  earlier  race." 

8  Tac. ,  Agric. ,  c.  xi.  3  Cf.  Rhys,  Celtic  Britain,  p.  213. 

*  Early  Man  in  Britain,  ch.  viii.  p.  290.     5  Ib. ,  p.  275.  6  Ib. ,  p.  290. 


PRE-ROMAN  BRITAIN  7 

commercial  intercourse  one  with  another,  though  of  course 
only  in  the  rude  and  primitive  form  of  barter ; l  for  stone 
axes  and  other  implements  are  found  distributed  over  dis- 
tricts very  far  removed  from  the  places  in  which  they  were 
made.  That  this  sort  of  traffic  was  carried  on  over  consider- 
able distances  is  also  proved  from  the  fact  that  axes  of  jade2 
are  found  in  Britain  where  that  material  was  quite  unknown. 

§  4.   Their  Social  and  Economic  Condition. 

The  social  condition  of  the  people  in  this  period  seems  to 
have  been  very  much  like  that  of  the  tribes  of  Central  Africa 
at  the  present  time.  They  were  divided  into  tribal  communi- 
ties, generally  at  war  one  with  another,  though  each  tribe 
probably  obeyed  its  own  chief,  "  whose  dominion  was  limited 
to  the  pastures  and  cultivated  lands  protected  by  his  fort, 
and  extended  but  a  little  way  into  the  depths  of  the  forests, 
which  were  the  hunting  ground  common  to  him  and  his 
neighbours."  Each  community  inhabited  a  sort  of  clearing 
in  the  forests  that  overspread  the  land,  and  grew  a  few 
patches  of  flax  for  spinning  or  small-eared  wheat  for  food  ; $ 
but  the  flocks  and  herds  must  have  constituted  their  chief 
property.  From  the  possession  of  such  property  social 
differences  must  very  early  have  arisen  ;  and  the  variation 
in  the  size  and  shape  of  their  burial  places  goes  to  show 
that  even  in  those  pre-historic  times  property  was  by  no 
means  equally  distributed. 

The  flocks  and  herds  here  mentioned  consisted  of  pigs, 
sheep,  goats,  and  oxen,  all  of  which  were  domesticated  in 
the  Neolithic  period.  Of  oxen,  two  or  three  breeds  were 
known  in  Europe,  though  in  Britain  "  the  small,  delicately- 
shaped  Celtic  shorthorn  "  *  was  the  sole  domestic  ox  as  late 
as  the  English  conquest.  In  the  fields  there  were  no  less 
than  eight  kinds  of  cereals  (including  varieties  of  wheat, 
barley,  and  millet)  and  "  several  of  our  most  familiar 
seeds  and  fruits  [e.g.,  peas,  apples,  pears,  plums]  grew  in 
the  Neolithic  gardens  and  orchards,"  5  though  all  were 

1 CJ.  Solinus,  c.  24,  speaking  of  the  Silurea  of  Wales  in  Roman  times : 
"They  will  have  no  markets  or  money,  but  give  and  take  in  kind,  getting 
what  they  want  by  barter  and  not  by  sale." 

» Early  Man,  p.  281.        s 76.,  p.  272.         «  76.,  p  297.          B  76.,  p.  301. 


8  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

smaller  and  nearer  to  their  wild  forms  than  those  now 
known.  Since  this  Neolithic  age  we  have  done  little  but 
progress  on  lines  which  the  primitive  workers  of  Britain  and 
Europe  began.  "  To  the  Neolithic  peoples  we  owe  the 
rudiments  of  the  culture  which  we  ourselves  enjoy.  The 
arts  which  they  introduced  have  never  been  forgotten,  and 
all  subsequent  progress  has  been  built  upon  their  foundation. 
Their  cereals  are  still  cultivated  by  the  farmer,  their 
domestic  animals  still  minister  to  us,  and  the  arts  of  which 
they  possessed  only  the  rudiments  have  developed  into  the  in- 
dustries — spinning,  weaving,  pottery-making,  mining — with- 
out which  we  can  scarcely  recognise  what  our  lives  would  be."1 

§  5.  The  Bronze  Age  and  the  Celtic  Immigration. 

The  Neolithic  age  survived  in  remote  parts  of  Britain 
almost  unchanged  into  Roman  times,  for  the  Silures  who 
fought  so  desperately  against  the  Romans  in  Wales  were 
still  in  this  stage  of  culture.2  But,  disregarding  these 
exceptional  tribes,  it  is  clear  that  culture,  civilisation,  and 
industry  all  made  vast  and  rapid  strides  when  the  Bronze 
age  succeeded  that  of  stone,  and  the  little  stone  axes  were 
superseded  by  those  of  metal.  Whether  the  Celts  of  the 
first  Celtic  immigration  brought  implements  and  weapons 
of  bronze  with  them,  as  Professor  Boyd  Dawkins  seems  to 
think,3  or  whether  these  Celts  were,  like  the  Iberians,  still 
in  the  stone  age  of  culture  when  they  first  came  to  Britain,4 
it  is  certain  that,  before  the  second  Celtic  immigration  took 
place  the  bronze  age  had  long  since  begun.  And  the 
bronze  axe  marked  a  new  epoch.  The  forest  trees  were 
now  more  easily  cut  down,  and  further  clearings  were  made 
for  agricultural  operations.  Wild  animals  became  scarcer 
with  the  invasion  of  the  forests,  and  men  had  to  rely  less 
upon  the  chase  and  more  upon  agriculture  for  their  food. 
With  the  progress  of  agriculture  came  a  step  upward  in 
civilisation.  Habitations,  too,  became  larger  and  were 
better  built ; 5  the  arts  of  spinning  and  weaving  both  flax 
and  wool  were  carried  on  more  successfully ; 6  the  harvest 

1  Early  Man,  p.  308.        2  Elton,  Origins,  p.  138.        3  Early  Man,  p.  342. 
4  So  Taylor,  Origin  of  the  Aryans,  p.  128.  5  Early  Man,  p.  352. 

6  /&.,  p.  359. 


PRE-ROMAN   BRITAIN  9 

was  now  gathered  with  bronze  reaping-hooks ; l  and  the 
smith  became  an  important  craftsman  with  a  comparatively 
large  array  of  tools.2  Mining  was  now  more  easily  carried 
on,  and  it  is  probable  that  Cornish  tin,  and  Irish  and 
Welsh  gold,3  were  worked  by  the  natives  of  Britain  and 
found  their  way  to  the  Greek  and  Phenician  traders  of  the 
Mediterranean  through  Gaul  to  the  port  of  Massilia.  As 
yet  these  southern  merchants  had  not  yet  ventured  as  far 
as  our  coasts,  and  the  adventurous  voyage  of  Pytheas  (B.C. 
330  ?)  was  yet  to  come.  But  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Britain  of  this  period  were  possessed  of  an  appreciable 
degree  of  civilisation.  "  It  is  clear,"  says  Elton,4  "  that  they 
were  not  mere  savages,  or  a  nation  of  hunters  and  fishers, 
or  even  a  people  in  the  pastoral  and  migratory  stage.  The 
tribes  had  learned  the  simpler  arts  of  society,  and  had 
advanced  towards  the  refinements  of  civilised  life.  .  .  . 
They  were,  for  instance,  the  owners  of  flocks  and  herds  ; 
they  knew  enough  of  weaving  to  make  clothes  of  linen  and 
wool ;  and  without  the  potter's  wheel  they  could  mould  a 
plain  and  useful  kind  of  earthenware.  The  stone  querns 
or  hand-mills,  and  the  seed-beds  in  terraces  on  the  hills  of 
Wales  and  Yorkshire,  show  their  acquaintance  with  the 
growth  of  some  kind  of  grain,  while  their  pits  and  hut- 
circles  prove  that  they  were  sufficiently  civilised  to  live  in 
regular  villages." 

The  Bronze  age  was  succeeded  by  that  of  Iron,  but  the 
pre-historic  Iron  Age  in  Britain  was  probably  of  much 
shorter  duration  than  that  of  bronze.5  "  It  is  represented 
principally  by  the  contents  of  an  insignificant  number  of 
tombs,  and  by  numerous  isolated  articles."  But  now  the 
small  isolated  communities  of  the  Neolithic  age  are 
becoming  welded  together  into  larger  bodies,  obedient  to 
one  rule  ;  8  civilisation  becomes  much  higher,  and  commerce 

1  Early  Man,  p.  360.  2  lb.,  p.  385. 

»  lb.,  p.  421.  «  Origins,  p.  145. 

8  Dr  Evans  places  the  beginning  of  the  bronze  age  in  Britain  between 
1400  and  1200  B.C.,  and  thinks  that  iron  swords  were  used  in  the  south  of 
Britain  soon  after  the  fourth  or  fifth  century  B.C.  In  the  third  or  second 
century  B.C.  bronze  had  practically  fallen  into  disuse  for  cutting  imple- 
ments.— Evans,  Ancient  Bronze  Implements,  pp.  471,  472. 

6  Early  Man,  p.  426. 


io  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

increases,  till  at  length  we  come  out  of  the  mists  of  antiquity 
into  the  clearer  dawn  of  history,  and  the  pre-historic  period 
is  at  an  end. 

§  6.  Resume  :  The  Peoples  of  Eo.rly  Britain. 
We  have  thus  seen  that  originally,  during  the  greater 
part  of  the  stone  age,  Britain  was  inhabited  by  the  short, 
dark,  Iberian  race,  and  that  towards  the  end  of  that  period 
it  was  invaded  by  a  tall  and  fair  Celtic  people,  who  either 
brought  with  them,  or  before  long  acquired,  implements 
and  weapons  of  metal.1  It  is  also  probable2  that  there 
were  two  Celtic  invasions  of  Britain,  the  first  that  of  the 
Goidels,  who  spread  into  Scotland  and  Ireland,  often  amal- 
gamating with  the  aborigines,  and  the  second  that  of  the 
Brythones,  who  seized  the  more  fertile  portions  of  the 
island,  in  the  south  and  south-east,  and  drove  the  others 
before  them  into  the  west  and  north.  These  Brythones 
included  the  Gaulish  tribes  mentioned  by  Caesar3  as  having 
crossed  over  from  Belgic  territories  into  Britain  not  very 
long  before  his  own  invasion  of  that  country,  "  though  there 
are  signs  that  an  immigration  from  Belgium  had  been  pro- 
ceeding for  several  generations  "  previously.4  There  were 
thus,  for  some  time  before  the  Roman  invasion  of  Caesar 
(B.C.  55),  peoples  of  three  different  stocks  living  together 
in  Britain.  There  were  the  more  or  less  civilised  Gauls  in 
the  eastern  portions,  who  had  come  over  long  before  the 
Roman  period,  and  gradually,  both  before  and  during  the 
Roman  occupation,  spread  across  the  island  in  a  northerly 
and  southerly  direction.  Then  there  were,  in  the  north 
and  west  of  the  island,  the  civilised  Celts  of  an  older 
migration,  whose  territories  stretched  from  the  Gaulish 
settlements  to  the  Irish  Sea,  and  included  both  Goidels  and 
Brythones.  And,  lastly,  here  and  there  in  many  localities, 
among  the  other  tribes,  we  constantly  come  upon  survivors 
of  the  older  and  pre-historic  tribes  of  a  much  remoter  period. 

§  7.   Their  Social  and  Economic  Condition. 
It  must  not,  however,   be  imagined   that  any  uniform 

1  Taylor,  Origin  oj  Aryans,  p.  80.     2  Rhys,  Celtic  Britain,  p.  213,  and  map. 
3  B.  O.,  ii.  4,  and  v.  14.  4  Elton,  Origins,  p.  102. 


PRE-ROMAN  BRITAIN  n 

description  will  apply  to  the  industrial  or  social  develop- 
ment of  these  different  races.  They  were  all  in  various 
stages  of  civilisation,  and  though  commercial,  and  possibly 
social,  intercourse  between  them  was  not  uncommon,  they 
remained  for  centuries  with  their  distinguishing  features 
unobliterated.  The  oldest  races  were  in  the  pre-metallic 
stage  ; l  the  British  Celts  were  in  the  later  Bronze  period 
on  their  first  arrival,  and  possibly  became  acquainted  with 
the  use  of  iron  later,  while  the  more  recent  Gaulish  arrivals 
were  certainly  familiar  with  iron  implements  and  weapons. 
We  are  prepared,  therefore,  to  find  great  dissimilarity  of 
culture  among  the  varied  population  of  Britain  in  the  pre- 
Roman  period.  The  oldest  races  were  really  little  other 
than  savages  in  their  mode  of  life — at  any  rate,  in  those 
remote  regions  to  which  they  had  retreated  before  the 
successive  Celtic  invasions.  Where  they  had  come  in  con- 
tact with  their  more  civilised  neighbours  they  were,  however, 
probably  not  so  wild  or  degraded  as  the  descriptions  of 
Greek  and  Roman  writers  of  that  day  seem  to  imply.2  But 
they  do  not  seem  to  have  had  regular  towns,  houses,  or 
fields,  though  they  kept  flocks  and  herds.  They  depended 
very  largely  on  hunting  for  their  subsistence,  and  also  on 
the  natural  products  of  the  woods,  such  as  wild  fruits  and 
nuts.  Dion  Cassius  mentions  their  strange  refusal  to  eat 
the  fish  with  which  British  rivers  were  at  that  time  swarm- 
ing, and  it  is  curious  to  notice,  as  showing  how  pre-historic 
customs  have  persisted  into  our  own  time,  that  in  certain 
Irish  and  Highland  localities  this  prejudice  still  exists.3 

§  8.  The  Celts  in  the  time  of  Pytheas. 
The  condition  of  the  Celtic  invaders  has  already  been 
alluded  to  in  the  remarks  made  above4  on  the  industries  of 
the  Bronze  Age,  but  we  may  here  briefly  add  the  informa- 
tion derived  from  the  observations  of  the  Greek  explorer 
Pytheas,  who  started  from  the  Greek  colony  of  Massalia 
(Marseilles)  about  330  B.C.  to  explore  "  the  Celtic  countries" 
of  the  north.  He  was  commissioned  by  a  committee  of  the 

1  Elton,  Origins,  p.  122. 

2  Cf.   Dion  Caaaius  (Xiphiline),   Ixxvi.    12 ;  Claudian,   B.    Oetic,  417 ; 
Solinus,  c.  4.  3  Elton,  p.  165.  4  Above,  p.  8. 


12  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

Massalian  merchants  to  discover  the  sources  of  the  lucrative 
tin  trade,  the  secret  of  which  had  hitherto  been  jealously 
guarded  by  the  Carthaginians,  who  monopolised  it.  The  nar- 
rative of  his  voyage  is  for  us  of  peculiar  interest,  for  its  frag- 
ments contain  the  first  notices  of  what  was  then  an  almost 
unknown  land  ; l  while  the  fact  that  the  Massalians  thought 

O 

the  tin  trade  of  such  importance  as  to  warrant  the  expense  of 
an  exploring  expedition  is  a  proof  of  the  activity  of  the  foreign 
commerce  of  pre-historic  Britain.  Pytheas,  on  reaching 
Britain,  which  he  first  touched  on  the  shores  of  Kent,  not 
only  landed  there,  but  travelled  over  part  of  the  country  on 
foot  to  collect  information  about  the  tin  trade.  He  almost 
certainly  went  westward,  passing  through  what  is  now 
Wiltshire  and  South  Hampshire — then  a  great  forest 
district  —  to  Cornwall.  "  Here  he  found  the  country 
of  the  tin,  which  was  dug  out  of  the  ground  in  mines 
with  shafts  and  galleries.  The  people  were  very 
hospitable,  their  commerce  with  foreign  merchants 
having  civilised  them  and  softened  their  manners."2  The 
tin  thus  mined  was  carried  six  days'  journey  to  an  island 
called  Ictis,3  whence  the  traders  from  Gaul  conveyed  it  across 
the  Channel  into  Gaul,  and  finally  down  the  Rhone  in 
barges  to  Massalia.  Besides  tin-mining,  Pytheas  found  a 
fairly  considerable  agriculture,  observing  "  an  abundance  of 
wheat  in  the  fields,"  though,  owing  to  the  moist  nature  of 
the  climate  and  lack  of  regular  sunshine,  the  sheaves  had  to 

1  The  statements  of  Pytheas,  recorded  as  they  are  only  by  his  critics, 
have  been  received  both  in  ancient  and  modern  times  with  considerable 
scepticism,  but  there  seems,  after  a  careful  review  of  them,  little  reason  to 
doubt  their  substantial  accuracy.     See  especially  C.  R.  Markham's  paper 
on  Pytheas,  the  discoverer  of  Britain,  in  The  Geographical  Journal,  Vol.  I. 
No.  6,  where  his  observations  are  vindicated  from  a  geographical  stand- 
point. 

2  Cf.  Diodorus  Siculus,  c.  22.     This  account  was  almost  certainly  taken 
from  Timaeus,  who  derived  it  from  Pytheas. 

3  Where  "Ictis"  was  situated  is  still  a  subject  of  controversy.     Elton 
thinks  it  was  Thanet  (p.  35-37),  Sir  E.  Bunbury  and  Captain  Markham 
think  it  was  St  Michael's  Mount.      Professor  Rhys  (Celtic  Britain,  46, 47) 
inclines  to   Thanet.      This  latter  view  certainly  explains  Caesar's  story 
that  the  tin  "  nascitur  in  mediterraneis  regionibus,"  and  also  explains  why 
Pytheas  on  touching  the  coast  at  Kent  had  to  travel  westwards,  seeing  on 
his  way  the  temple  of  Stonehenge,  very  early  reports  of  which  reached  the 
Greek.     But  Elton  doubts  his  being  in  those  parts. 


PRE-ROMAN  BRITAIN  13 

be  thrashed  in  "  great  barns."  l  The  natives  possessed  also 
"  cultivated  fruits,  a  great  abundance  of  some  domesticated 
animals  but  a  scarcity  of  others,  and  made  a  beverage  from 
wheat  and  honey,"2  the  ft  metheglin  "  of  some  country  dis- 
tricts in  the  present  day.  That  the  state  of  agriculture  was, 
however,  very  backward  in  some  districts  (probably  those 
occupied  by  the  older  inhabitants),  we  gather  from  Posi- 
donius,3  who  visited  Britain  in  the  first  century  B.C.,  and 
related  that  the  "  people  have  mean  habitations  made  chiefly 
of  rushes  or  sticks,  and  their  harvest  consists  in  cutting  off 
the  ears  of  corn  and  storing  them  in  pits  underground," 
using  it  from  day  to  day.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  agricul- 
ture was  well  advanced  in  the  Gaulish  settlements  of  the 
South  and  East.  "The  British  Gauls,"  says  Elton,4  "appear 
to  have  been  excellent  farmers,  skilled  as  well  in  the  pro- 
duction of  cereals  as  in  stock-raising  and  the  management 
of  the  dairy.  Their  farms  were  laid  out  in  large  fields 
without  enclosures  or  fences,  and  they  learned  to  make  a 
permanent  separation  of  the  pasture  and  arable,  and  to 
apply  the  manures  which  were  appropriate  to  each  kind  of 
field.  The  plough  was  of  the  wheeled  kind,  an  invention 
that  superseded  the  old  '  overtreading  plough  '  held  down  by 
the  driver's  foot."  A  remarkable  proof  of  their  advanced 
knowledge  was  shown  in  the  practice  of  marling.  "  They 
relied  greatly  on  marling  and  chalking  the  land.  The  same 
soil,  however,  was  never  twice  chalked,  as  the  effects  were 
visible  after  standing  the  experience  of  fifty  years.  The 
effect  of  the  ordinary  marl  was  of  even  longer  duration,  the 
benefit  being  visible  in  some  instances  for  a  period  of  eighty 
years."  Many  varieties  of  marl  were  used — the  lime-marl, 
chalk-marl,  the  red,  dove-coloured,  sandy,  and  pumice 
varieties  being  all  mentioned  by  Pliny.  They  had  two 
varieties  of  cattle — the  small  Welsh  breed  or  "  Celtic  short- 
horn "  and  the  Kyloe  or  Argyllshire  variety — as  well  as 
sheep,  pigs,  and  fowls.6  It  is  worthy  of  notice,  in  view  of 
landed  customs  which  we  shall  have  to  note  in  later  times, 
that  there  is  no  trace  among  them  of  co-operative  husbandry. 

1  Strabo,  iv.,  v.  5.  (Cos.  201).  J  /&.  •  See  Diodoruu,  v.  21» 

4  Elton,  pp.  115-116.  8  Ib.,  pp.  116-117. 


14  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

The  Gauls  were  likewise  expert  not  only  in  agricultural  but 
also  in  textile  manufactures  of  a  simple  kind  in  cloth  and 
linen.  "  They  wove  their  stuffs  for  summer,  and  rough 
felts  or  druggets  for  winter  wear,1  which  are  said  to  have 
been  prepared  with  vinegar,  and  to  have  been  so  tough  as  to 
resist  the  stroke  of  a  sword.  They  had  learned  the  art  of 
using  alternate  colours  for  the  warp  and  woof,  so  as  to  bring 
out  a  pattern  of  stripes  and  squares,"  and  obviously  of 
dyeing  the  materials. 

We  see,  then,  from  a  survey  of  the  various  inhabitants  of 
Britain  in  pre-Roman  times,  that  they  had  reached  in  some 
parts  a  very  fair  degree  of  industrial  development,  especially 
in  agriculture,  though  in  other  districts  they  were  equally 
backward.  Manufactures  and  mining 2  were  in  progress, 
and  the  latter  had  given  rise  to  what  must  have  been  for 
those  times  a  considerable  foreign  commerce,  though  this 
was  confined  to  the  southern  coasts.  It  is  not  easy, 
perhaps,  to  gain  a  general  survey  of  the  country,  because  the 
conditions  of  culture  in  the  various  districts  and  among  the 
different  races  were  so  diverse,  and  this  diversity  was  at 
once  a  consequence  and  a  cause  of  the  difficulties  of  com- 
munication. But  though  we  cannot  in  this  period  make 
any  industrial  generalisations,  we  may  be  certain  that  its 
industrial  conditions  left  some  marks  on  future  ages,  and 
that  any  consideration  of  post-Roman  civilisation  and  customs 
— especially  in  the  permanent  and  abiding  influences  of 
agriculture — must  necessarily  be  imperfect  if  it  fails  to 
take  into  account  the  survivals  of  the  pre-historic  period. 

§  9.  Foreign  Trade  of  Britain. 

It  was  the  conquest  of  Gaul  that  brought  the  Romans  of 
Julius  Caesar's  day  close  to  the  shores  of  Britain,  and  it  was 
mainly  from  the  reports  of  Gaulish  traders  that  Caesar 
derived  not  only  his  knowledge  of  that  country  but  also  his 

1  Elton,  pp.  110,  111. 

2  The  tin  districts  of  the  time  of  Pytheas  and  Posidonius,  i.e.  in  the  third 
and  first  centuries  B.C.,   are  given  by  Elton,  p.  33,  as  Dartmoor,  the 
country  round  Tavistock  and  round   St  Austell,  the  southern  coast  of 
Cornwall,  the  district  round  St  Agnes  on  the  north  coast,  and  between 
Cape  Cornwall  and  St  Ives. 


PRE-ROMAN  BRITAIN  15 

desire  to  conquer  it  The  Romans  evidently  thought  the 
conquest  worth  making  for  the  sake  of  the  possible  wealth 
that  might  accrue  from  it,  for  the  inhabitants  of  Britain 
were  hardly  formidable  enough  politically  to  threaten  the 
Roman  frontiers  in  Gaul.  Probably  they  expected  more 
from  the  island  than  they  actually  obtained,1  and,  as  Elton 
remarks,2  "  the  ultimate  conquest  was  doubtless  hastened  by 
the  dream  of  winning  a  land  of  gold  and  a  rich  reward  of 
victory."  But  although  we  may  admit  that  the  Romans 
entertained  exaggerated  hopes,  we  may  glance  for  a  moment 
at  the  actual  state  of  trade  in  Britain  in  the  days  before 
their  arrival. 

It  is  obvious,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  Phenicians  and 
Carthaginians,  and — after  the  voyage  of  Pytheas — also  the 
Greeks,  would  not  have  made  their  long  and  dangerous 
voyages  to  Britain  for  tin  unless  the  supplies  of  that  metal 
had  been  sufficiently  large  to  make  it  well  worth  their 
while,  especially  as  it  was  procurable  also  in  Spain.  Hence 
the  British  tin  trade  must  have  been  of  considerable 
dimensions  for  those  times.  It  is  equally  obvious  that  the 
foreign  traders  must  have  brought  other  goods  to  exchange 
for  tin,  since  the  British  were  in  that  stage  of  civilisation  when 
barter  comes  naturally  to  the  uncommercial  mind,  and  the 
use  of  coined  money  was  little  understood.3  Besides  tin,  it  is 
certain  that  the  gold  which  is  found  with  tin  in  Cornwall, 
and  the  silver  which  is  also  mingled  with  the  lead,  formed 
articles  of  export.  Iron  was  also  exported,4  especially 
when  the  Gauls  of  the  later  immigration  began  to  work 
the  mines  of  the  Weald  of  Kent.  Besides  metals,  we  find 
mention  of  agricultural  and  pastoral  produce,  corn  and 
barley,  cattle  and  hides ;  and  the  trade  in  the  special 
British  breed  of  bunting  dogs,6  both  with  Gaul  and  Rome, 
was  of  some  importance.  The  pearl  fishery,  of  which  we 
hear  so  much  from  Bede,  was  probably  greatly  exaggerated, 
since  Tacitus  mentions  British  pearls  only  to  slight  them, 
and  it  is  improbable  that  it  should  not  have  continued  till 

1  Tac.,  Agric.,  12.  2  Origins,  p.  293. 

*  For  these  imports,  see  p.  16.  *  Cresar,  B.  G.,  v.  12. 

8  Martial,  Epigram,  xiv.  200;  Claudian,  StiL,  iii.  301. 


1 6  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

much  later  times  if  it  had  been  lucrative.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  slave  trade  was  an  important  feature,  especially 
after  the  Roman  conquest.  Among  the  most  ancient 
articles  of  commerce  was  almost  certainly  amber,  of  which 
small  quantities  were  found  on  certain  portions  of  the 
British  coast ;  but  the  British  supply  is  too  small  to  account 
for  the  great  quantity  found  in  the  tumuli,1  and  hence  it 
must  have  formed  an  important  article  of  import  from  the 
North  Sea  and  Baltic  shores.  Very  probably  the  Phenician 
and  other  traders  found  it  a  useful  medium  of  exchange, 
and  under  the  Roman  Empire  the  import  from  the  Ostians  2 
was  sufficient  to  bear  a  tax  which  yielded  a  small  revenue.3 
Ivory,  bracelets  (and  certainly  other  ornaments),  glass,  and 
"  such-like  petty  merchandise/'  are  all  mentioned  by 
Strabo  4  as  being  imported,  and  his  statements  indicate  the 
kind  of  trade  that  must  have  gone  on  for  centuries  before 
his  time.  Weapons  of  all  kinds  would  find  a  ready  sale  in 
the  island,  while  furs  and  the  skins  of  wild  animals,  of  which 
there  were  very  large  numbers  in  Britain,  were  exported. 
Speaking  generally  we  may  say  that,  although  the  Britains 
were  able  to  manufacture  implements,  weapons,  pottery,  and 
clothing  for  themselves,  yet  the  foreign  trade  was  necessar- 
ily an  exchange  of  foreign  manufactured  articles  for  raw  pro- 
duce, and  continued  for  many  centuries  to  be  of  this  nature. 

§10.  Internal  Trade :  Hoods  and  Rivers. 

The  means  of  communication  by  which  trade  was  carried 
on  internally  were  the  rivers,  the  "  ridge  ways  "  6  or  roads 
on  the  open  ground  at  the  top  of  ridges  of  hills — of  which 
the  High  Street  in  the  Lake  district,  afterwards  a  Roman 
road,  is  a  very  good  example — and  other  rough  tracks.  The 
first  road-makers  were  the  wild  animals  migrating  to  early 
pastures  and  the  savages  who  followed  them.6  But  the  place 
of  rivers  in  the  commercial  history  of  the  early  and  middle 
ages  was  most  important,  since,  till  good  roads  were  made, 

1  Of.  Elton,  p.  63. 

2  They  occupied  the  district  near  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe,  though  Dr 
Latham  places  them  further  east. 

*  Strabo,  iv.  278.  4  76.  5  Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  88. 

6  Thorold  Rogers,  Econ.  Int.  of  History,  p.  490. 


PRE-ROMAN  BRITAIN  17 

carriage  by  water  was  far  less  troublesome  and  expensive 
than  by  land,1  and  it  has  been  well  remarked  2  that  the 
rivers  Thames  and  Severn  were  of  prime  importance  to  the 
development  of  early  British  trade.3  Down  these  rivers  the 
British  trader  floated  in  his  frail  coracle  or  "  curragh  " 
of  hides,  and  even  ventured  to  cross  over  from  the 
western  coasts  to  Ireland.4  The  people  of  the  southern  and 
Cornish  shore  had,  however,  ships  of  oak  of  a  much  more 
seaworthy  character,  and  evidently,  from  Ca?sar's  account,6 
were  skilful  and  daring  navigators.  They  traded  chiefly 
with  Northern  and  "Western  Gaul. 

§  11.  Physical  Aspect  of  Pre-Roman  Britain. 

Having  gained  some  idea  of  the  industry  and  com- 
merce of  early  Britain,  it  is  now  time  to  glance  briefly  at 
the  physical  condition  of  the  country  which  the  Romans 
were  about  to  conquer.  We  are  struck  at  once  by  the  fact 
that  its  appearance  was  vastly  different  from  the  aspect 
which  it  wears  to-day.  The  typical  English  landscape  of 
the  present,  with  its  smiling  pasturage,  neat  hedges,  and 
well-tilled  fields,  simply  did  not  then  exist,  or,  at  any  rate, 
was  to  be  seen  only  in  a  few  favoured  spots.  Whereas 
to-day  the  cultivable  and  cultivated  area  includes  the 
greater  part  of  the  surface,  it  was  at  that  time  only  a  small 
fraction  of  it.  Forests  and  scrub,  fen,  moor,  and  marsh 
occupied  most  of  the  land.  "  A  cold  and  watery  desert  "  is 
Elton's  description  of  it,6  and  though  his  expression  is 
exaggerated,  it  is  nearer  the  truth  than  another  writer's 
fanciful  epithet7  of  a  "land  of  sunshine  and  pearls." 
Britain  was  certainly  far  more  rainy  then  than  now,  owing 

1  So,  too,  in  Europe  the  main  commercial  routes  followed  in  France  the 
Rhine,  and  in  Germany  the  Rhone  and  Danube ;  see  my  Commerce  in 
Europe,  §§  68,  69.  2  Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  89. 

8  In  this  commerce  coins  were  probably  not  much  used,  and  it  is  supposed 
that  no  British  coins  were  struck  before  200  B.C.,  though  some  are  said  to 
appear  to  be  "  centuries  older  than  Caesar's  first  expedition."  Later  on  the 
various  chiefs  seem  to  have  struck  silver  and  other  coins  for  their  own 
tribes  in  imitation  of  Gallic  and  Roman  money.  Cf.  Evans,  Coins  of  the 
Ancient  Britons,  for  a  subject  which  we  cannot  discuss  properly  here. 

«  Elton,  p.  232.  5  Csesar,  B.  G.,  iii.  9,  13. 

•  Origin*,  p.  218.  7  In  Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  89. 

B 


1 8  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

to  the  influence  of  the  vast  forests  which  covered  the  land, 
and  consequently  also  it  was  more  foggy.  "  The  ground 
and  atmosphere  were  alike  overloaded  with  moisture.  The 
fallen  timber  obstructed  the  streams ;  the  rivers  were 
squandered  in  the  reedy  morasses,  and  only  the  downs  and 
hill-tops  rose  above  the  perpetual  tracts  of  wood."  l  It  was 
these  downs  and  hill-tops  on  which  the  earliest  inhabitants, 
unable  to  clear  the  forests  effectually  with  their  feeble  axes, 
necessarily  practised  the  first  elements  of  agriculture,2  and 
it  is  here  that  their  traces  are  most  abundant.  The 
gradual  clearing  away  of  the  woodland  in  later,  and  especially 
in  Roman,  times  drew  the  agriculturist  down  into  the  river 
valleys.  The  extent  of  forest  was  immense.  In  the  South 
there  were  more  than  a  hundred  miles  of  the  "  Andreds- 
weald "  between  Hampshire  and  the  Medway,  and  many 
miles  more  in  the  opposite  direction  into  Dorset  and  Wilt- 
shire. In  the  Severn  valley  was  the  forest  of  the  Wyre, 
around  the  modern  Worcester,  extending  right  over 
Cheshire,  and  the  forest  of  Arden  nearly  covered  all 
Warwickshire.  Another  huge  wood  lay  between  London 
and  the  Wash  ;  the  Midlands  from  Lincoln  to  Leicester 
and  from  the  Peak  to  the  Trent  were  occupied  by  miles  of 
forest,  of  which  Sherwood  and  Charnwood  are  only  fractional 
and  fragmentary  remains.  Yorkshire  arid  Lancashire  were 
wild  wastes  of  moorland  and  scrub,  and  most  of  the  country 
was  regarded  as  a  desert  that  lay  between  Derby  Peak  and 
the  Roman  Wall.3 

The  marshes  and  swamps  were  also  of  considerable  extent 
in  many  low-lying  parts  that  have  since  been  drained  and  re- 
claimed. Notably  this  was  the  case  with  the  Romney  Marsh 
on  the  coast  of  Kent,  which,  when  Caesar  came  to  Britain, 
was  a  morass  invaded  every  day  by  the  tide  as  far  as  Roberts- 
bridge  in  Sussex.4  The  low-lying  parts  of  Essex,  Surrey,  and 

1  Elton,  p.  218. 

2  Green,   Making  of  England,  p.  8  ;  and  Gomme,   Village  Community, 
pp.   75-95,   who    deals    fully    with    the    "terrace    cultivation"   on    the 
hills. 

3  The  above  description    is   based    on    Green's    vivid    picture   in   the 
Making  of  England,  pp.  10-12. 

4  Elton,  p.  103. 


PRE-ROMAN  BRITAIN  19 

Kent  below  London  were  then  "extensive  flats  covered 
with  water  at  every  tide,"1  and  the  Thames  estuary  invaded 
a  district  almost  as  large  as  the  Wash.  The  valley  of  the 
Stour  l  was  also  covered  by  the  sea  for  many  miles  above 
the  present  tidal  limit,  while  the  Wash  extended  north- 
wards nearly  to  Lincoln  and  westwards  to  Huntingdon  and 
Cambridge.  The  lower  reaches  of  the  Trent  formed 
another  huge  marsh,  and  its  basin  generally  was  one  of  the 
wildest  and  least  frequented  parts  of  the  island.2 

In  this  comparatively  wild  and  uncultivated  condition  of 
the  country,  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  wild  animals  were 
exceedingly  numerous.  In  fact,  they  existed  till  far  into 
the  period  of  modern  history.  Wolves  and  bears  were  met 
in  the  vast  forests  for  centuries  after  the  Roman  and  Saxon 
invasions,  and  only  gradually  became  extinct.3  The  wild 
boar  was  very  common,  and  so  late  as  Henry  II. 's  reign  was 
hunted  on  Hampstead  Heath,  where  also  were  chased  the 
wild  cattle  whose  descendants  are  now  regarded  as  curiosi- 
ties in  the  famous  herd  at  Chillingham  Park.  A  sign  of 
the  infrequency  of  human  habitation  in  certain  districts  is 
seen  in  the  numbers  of  beavers  that  built  their  colonies  on 
the  streams,  remaining  in  remote  parts  till  the  twelfth 
century.4  Indeed,  it  is  evident  that  the  Britain  of  pre- 
Roman  days  must  have  been,  on  the  whole,  a  very  wild  and 
savage  country,  many  parts  of  which  had  scarcely  even  been 
trodden  by  the  foot  of  man.  Yet,  as  we  have  seen,  there 
were  already  in  some  places,  especially  in  the  South-East, 
many  marks  of  civilisation  and  progress  in  industrial  arts, 
and  when  the  Romans  came  to  the  island  they  found  many 
tribes  and  settlements  that  were  considerably  advanced  in 
agricultural  and  domestic  industries,  though,  on  the  other 

1  Airy,  in  Athenaeum,  1683,  on  the  Claudian  Invasion  of  Britain. 

2  Making  of  England,  p.  75. 

'Martial  (Epigr.,  vii.  34),  mentions  the  Scotch  bear,  and  Boyd  Dawkins 
(Cave  Hunting,  p.  75),  thinks  the  native  British  bear  was  not  extinct  till  the 
tenth  century  A.D.  Frequent  mention  of  wolves  is  found  in  mediaeval  docu 
ments — e.g.,  in  the  account  rolls  of  Whitby  Abbey,  temp.  Rio.  H.,  and 
they  probably  were  not  extinct  in  England  till  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  (Newton,  Zoology  of  Ancient  Europe,  p.  24),  and  in  Scotland 
much  later. 

4  Girald.  Cambrensia,  Itin.  Wall,  ii.  3. 


20  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

hand,  there  were  others  but  little  removed  from  savagery. 
We  shall  probably  be  right  in  supposing  that  the  divergences 
of  culture  were  very  strongly  marked,  and  that  a  considerable 
distinction  was  to  be  found  between  the  skilled  Gaulish 
farmer  of  Kent  and  the  wild  pre-Aryan  inhabitants  of  the 
North  and  West. 


CHAPTER    II 

ROMAN    BRITAIN 

§  12.  The  Roman  Occupation. 

THE  two  expeditions  of  Julius  Caesar  in  the  years  55  and 
54  B.C. — the  first  of  which  was  certainly  a  failure  and  the 
second  very  nearly  so — were  followed  by  almost  a  century 
of  repose  from  foreign  invasion.  It  was  not  till  ninety 
years  after  Caesar's  earlier  attempts  that  the  Romans,  led 
on  this  occasion  by  Aulus  Plautius,  and  aided  by  German 
auxiliaries,  again  invaded  Britain  (A.D.  44).  But  this  time 
they  came  to  stay,  and  although  the  conquest  proved 
perhaps  more  difficult  than  they  had  anticipated,  it  was 
under  successive  generals  accomplished  at  last.  The  year 
70  A.D.  may  be  taken,  for  convenience,  as  the  date  when 
the  power  of  the  most  stubborn  of  the  natives  was  effec- 
tually broken,  and  though  much  fighting  remained  to  be 
done,  the  conquest  was  practically  complete.  For  seventy 
years  after  the  victories  of  Julius  Agricola  (A.D.  70-84) 
there  was  peace,  and  had  it  not  been  for  the  incursions  of 
the  Picts  and  Scots  by  land,  and  of  the  Saxon  pirates  by 
sea,  the  peace  would  have  been  almost  uninterrupted.  The 
Romans  remained  as  the  rulers  of  Britain  for  three  centuries 
and  a  half,  and  then  the  exigencies  of  self-defence  in  other 
regions  of  the  Empire  compelled  them  to  retire.  The  last 
legions  left  the  island  in  407  A.D.1 

It  is  difficult  to  estimate  the  exact  effect  of  their  occu- 
pation. While  some  very  able  writers2  have  found  reason 
to  believe  that  it  had  lasting  effects  both  on  the  political, 
municipal,  industrial,  and  especially  on  the  agricultural 
development  of  the  country,  others  have  regarded  it  merely 
as  a  military  administration,  similar  (as  we  are  told  with  a 
rather  wearisome  paucity  of  example)  to  that  of  the  French 

1  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  24.     The  date  410  A.D.  is  that  of  the 
letter  bidding  Britain  provide  for  its  own  defence. 

2  As  e.g.  Coote,  in  his  Romans  in  Britain. 


22  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

in  Algeria.1  It  would  probably  be  nearer  the  truth,  to 
compare  the  Roman  position  with  that  of  the  English  in 
India,  making  due  allowance  for  differences  of  civilisation 
and  of  policy.  The  Romans  could  no  more  settle  in  Britain 
on  account  of  the  cold  than  we  can  settle  in  India  on 
account  of  the  heat.  So,  too,  if  the  English  were  to  withdraw 
from  India  after  three  hundred  years  of  occupancy  (and 
they  will  probably  retire  before  that  period),  the  net  effect 
of  their  presence  would  be  much  the  same  as  that  of  the 
Romans  here.  The  influence  in  both  cases  has  been  only 
skin  deep,  and  though  it  touches  the  upper  classes  of  the 
natives  very  effectually,  it  hardly  affects  the  lower.  Well- 
to-do  British  youths  went  to  study  and  "  see  life  "  in  Rome, 
just  as  well-to-do  Hindu  and  Mahornmedan  youths  come  to 
London,  and  with  much  the  same  result.  Prominent 
natives  were  occasionally  entrusted  in  Britain  with  Roman 
administration,  as  they  are  similarly  entrusted  by  us  in 
India.  After  all,  it  is  mainly  the  efforts  of  industry  which 
survive.  The  customs,  laws,  and  language  disappear,  and 
the  roads  and  bridges  remain.  These,  with  a  number  of 
ruined  fortresses,  lighthouses,2  drainage  works,  and  towns 
which  had  sprung  from  camps,  are  the  most  important 
relics  of  the  Roman  occupation  in  Britain. 

§  13.  Moman  Boads. 

We  will  speak  of  the  roads  first,  because,  especially  now, 
in  an  age  of  railways,  their  importance  cannot  be  over- 
estimated. They  were  not  all  by  any  means  first  built  by 
the  Romans,  but  represent  in  many  cases  adaptations  of 
and  improvements  upon  Celtic,  or  even  still  more  ancient,3 
roadways.  The  roadway  over  High  Street,  near  Winder- 
mere,  is  such  an  one.  But  the  main  function  of  the  Roman 
roads  was,  after  all,  military,  and  therefore  we  find  them 
made  sometimes  more  with  a  view  to  the  military  import- 
ance of  certain  strategic  connections  than  to  the  require- 
ments of  commerce.  At  the  same  time,  after  these  roads 

1  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  7,  and  Pearson,  History  of  England,  i.  55. 

2  As  at  Dover,  and  the  Richborough  beacon. 

8  Cf.  Thorold  Rogers,  Econ.  Interpr.  of  History,  p.  490. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN  23 

had  been  once  made,  whatever  their  original  purpose  may 
have  been,  they  were  eagerly  used  by  traders,  who  were 
also  thankful  for  the  military  protection  which  the  roads 
enjoyed.  "  The  Roman  plan,"  says  Elton,1  "  was  based  on 
the  requirements  of  the  provincial  government,  and  on  the 
need  for  constant  communication  between  the  Kentish  ports 
and  the  outlying  fortresses  on  the  frontiers."  Hence  several 
of  the  routes  fell  into  comparative  desuetude  when  the 
strategic  need  for  them  was  gone,  and  only  those  which 
afforded  the  greatest  facilities  for  commerce  were  kept  up. 
The  needs  of  industry  frequently  outlive  those  of  war.  In 
mediaeval  times  we  find  four  great  highways  traversing  the 
kingdom  of  England,  and  representing  "  a  combination  of 
those  portions  of  the  Roman  roads  which  the  English  adopted 
and  kept  in  repair,  as  communications  between  their  prin- 
cipal cities."  These  four  great  highways  were  z  : — 

(1.)  Waiting  Street  (to  use  its  later  name),  from  Kent 
to  London,  and  then  vid  St  Albans  and  Northampton  to 
Chester  and  on  to  York,  bifurcating  then  northwards  to 
Carlisle  and  to  near  Newcastle. 

(2.)  The  Fosse  Way,  from  the  Cornish  tin-mines  through 
Bath  and  Cirencester  to  Lincoln,  crossing  Watling  Street 
at  High  Cross  between  Coventry  and  Leicester. 

(3.)  Ermin  Street,  a  direct  route  from  London  to  Lincoln 
through  Colchester  and  Cambridge,  and  sending  out 
branches  to  Doncaster  and  York. 

(4.)  Ikenild  or  Ickenield  Street,  whose  course  is  some- 
what obscure,  and  is  often  confused  with  Ryknild  Street, 
which  latter  led  from  the  Severn  valley  and  Gloucester  to 
Doncaster.  The  Ikenild  Street  came  from  Norwich  and 
Bury  St  Edmunds  to  Dunstable,  thence  to  Southampton, 
with  branches  to  Sarum  and  the  western  districts. 

§14.  Roman  Towns  in  Britain. 

Of  these,  which  are  commonly  called  the  four  Roman 
ways,  the  Ikenild  Street  was  almost  certainly  an  ancient 

1  Origins,  p.  327,  where  the  military  system  of  roads  is  fully  explained. 

a  Cf.  Elton,  Origins,  p.  326,  and  Guest,  The  Four  Roman  Ways,  Archcrol. 
Journ.,  xiv.  p.  99,  and  also  Cooper  King  in  Social  England,  voL  i.  pp.  49-51, 
who  adds  others. 


24  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

British  pathway,  possibly  adapted  and  used  by  the  Romans, 
while  Ermin  Street  is  thought  not  to  have  been  Roman 
south  of  Huntingdon.  There  was,  however,  an  important 
Roman  road  from  London  to  Richborough  (Rutupiae)  on 
the  Kentish  coast,  then  the  chief  military  and  commercial 
port  for  intercourse  with  Gaul,  and  strongly  fortified,  where 
on  dark  nights  a  beacon  always  shone  to  guide  ships  across 
the  channel.  Along  all  the  roads  there  were  frequent 
fortresses  and  stationary  camps,  and  it  is  in  many  cases 
from  these  camps  that  our  English  towns  have  grown  up.1 
The  towns  were  divided  (constitutionally)  into  four  classes, 
and  the  division  helps  us  to  understand  their  relative  im- 
portance. First  came  the  colonies,  inhabited  by  Roman 
veterans,  and  enjoying  the  same  laws  and  customs  as 
Rome  itself.  There  were  nine  of  these — Richborough  and 
Reculver,  guarding  the  now  filled-up  channel  of  Thanet  to 
the  Thames ;  London,  an  important  trading  centre  from 
Celtic  times ;  Colchester ;  Bath,  then  as  now  a  noted 
sanatorium ;  and  Gloucester,  Caerleon-on-Usk,  Chester, 
Lincoln,  and  Chesterfield,  all  of  military  importance.  Next 
came  the  municipia,  where  the  inhabitants  had  the  rights 
of  Roman  citizens,  making  their  own  laws  and  electing 
their  own  magistrates.  There  were  only  two  of  these — 
York,  the  northern  capital,  quite  as  important  in  those 
times  as  London ;  and  Verulamium  (St  Albans),  which 
guarded  the  entrances  to  the  Midlands.  Third  in  order 
came  those  towns,  ten  in  number,  which  had  the  Latin 
right  and  elected  their  own  magistrates,  and  lastly  came 
the  stipendiary  towns,  which  were  governed  by  Roman 
officials,  and  had  to  pay  tribute.  This  class  included  all 
towns  not  mentioned  above — that  is  to  say,  nearly  the 
whole  population  of  Britain.2 

It  has  been  truly  said  that  "  the  type  of  every  Roman 
city  was  the  camp,"  3  but  it  is  equally  true  that  "  a  Roman 
camp  was  a  city  in  arms,"4  in  which  the  soldiers  corresponded 
to  the  colonists  and  settlers  of  more  modern  times.  "The 

1  About  218  Roman  stations  are  known  in  Britain.     Soc.  England,  vol.  i. 
p.  62. 

2  Lingard,  Niyt.  of  Eng.,  i.  p.  50;  Wright,  Celt,  Roman,  and  Saxon. 

3  Pearson,  Hist,  of  Eng.,  i.  43.  4  Elton,  Origins,  p,  310. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN  25 

ramparts  and  pathways  of  the  camps  developed  into  walls 
and  streets,  the  square  of  the  tribunal  into  the  market- 
place, and  every  gateway  was  the  beginning  of  a  suburb, 
where  straggling  rows  of  shops,  temples,  rose-gardens,  and 
cemeteries  were  delivered  from  all  danger  by  the  presence 
of  a  permanent  garrison.  In  the  centre  of  the  town  stood 
a  group  of  public  buildings,  containing  the  court-house,  baths, 
and  barracks,  and  it  seems  likely  that  every  important  place 
had  a  theatre  or  a  circus  for  races  and  shows." l  There 
were  fifty-nine  towns  2  that  might  be  called  Roman,  but  the 
bulk  of  the  population  was  engaged  in  agriculture  and  re- 
sided in  the  country  districts,  and  therefore  it  is  to  rural 
industry  that  we  must  now  turn  our  attention. 

§  15.   The  Romans  and  Agriculture. 

It  seems  doubtful  whether  the  Romans  ever  settled  in 
sufficient  numbers  to  alter  permanently  the  conditions  of 
agricultural  industry,  except  in  a  few  very  favourable  neigh- 
bourhoods. In  the  first  place  the  climate  was  against 
them,  just  as  it  is  against  the  English  in  India,  though 
from  a  totally  different  reason.  Just  as  no  Englishman 
could  tolerate  life  in  India  without  the  ever-moving  punkah, 
so  no  Roman  could  reside  in  his  English  villa  unless  it  was 
carefully  heated  by  hot-water  pipes.3  Nor  did  the  land  offer 
a  chance  of  making  great  wealth.  "  The  great  number  of 
villas  whose  remains  can  still  be  traced  is  a  proof  that  the  lords 
of  the  soil  were  in  easy  circumstances,  while  the  fact  that 
the  structures  were  commonly  of  wood,  raised  upon  a  brick  or 
stone  foundation,  is  an  argument  against  large  fortunes."  4  The 
surface  of  the  country,  too,  was  still  wild  and  unreclaimed 
in  many  parts,  and  not  suitable  for  advanced  agriculture. 
The  river- valleys,  which  contain  a  richer  and  more  fertile 
soil,  were  only  gradually  being  cleared  of  the  primeval 
forest  that  encumbered  them,  for  it  is  a  significant  fact  that 
it  is  mainly  in  the  natural  clearings  of  the  uplands  that  the 
population  concentrated  itself  at  the  close  of  the  Roman 
rule,  and  it  is  over  these  districts  that  the  ruins  of  the 

1  Elton,  Origins,  p.  311.  "  .Murcianus,  Htracleota,  ii.  14. 

3  Green,  Alakwy  of  England,  pp.  7  and  45. 
*  Vearson,  Ifiitory  of  England,  i.  52 


26  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

villas  or  country  houses  of  the  Roman  landowners  are  most 
thickly  planted.1  Besides  all  this,  the  distance  of  Britain 
from  the  centre  of  the  Roman  world  was  sufficient  to  pre- 
vent a  large  influx  of  Roman  settlers,  and  hence  it  is  not  at 
all  surprising  to  find  that  most  of  the  Roman  monuments 
and  inscriptions  in  our  island  refer  mainly  to  matters  of  a 
military  and  official  character. 

At  the  same  time  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  those  dis- 
tricts where  the  few  Roman  settlers  did  build  their  villas 
must  have  enjoyed  many  industrial  advantages  over  the 
more  barbarous  portions  of  the  island.  Traces  of  those 
villas,2  with  their  Italian  inner  courts,  colonnades,  and 
tesselated  pavements  are  still  found,  the  household  buildings 
being  surrounded  by  an  outer  wall,  against  which  were  pro- 
bably built  the  rude  huts  of  the  British  peasantry  or  serfs  who 
tilled  the  foreigner's  land.  But  it  is  not  certain  that  these 
Roman  farmers  were  responsible  for  the  peculiar  features 
that  afterwards  distinguished  English  agricultural  and 
manorial  life,  and  very  possibly  too  much  importance  has 
been  attached  to  Roman  influence  in  this  respect.  It  is 
going  too  far  to  say  that,  during  the  Roman  period,  "  Eng- 
land became  an  agricultural  country,"  and  that  "  the  agri- 
cultural system  then  established  remained  during  and  after 
the  barbarian  invasions."  3  We  know  that  even  before  the 
arrival  of  Caesar  the  Gallic  Britons  of  the  south-east  were 
comparatively  good  farmers  (p.  13),  and  it  is  sufficient  to 
admit  that  their  agriculture  was  further  developed  after  the 
Roman  conquest,  without  assuming  the  introduction  of  the 
Roman  agricultural  system. 

The  majority  of  the  remains  of  Roman  villas  are  found 
in  the  southern  counties,4  and,  however  great  their  influence 
undoubtedly  was  here,  it  did  not  extend  very  far  into  the 
interior.  The  fact  that  Britain  became  celebrated  for  its 
export  of  corn  6  may  be  taken  in  more  than  one  way.  Some 
have  regarded  it  as  a  proof  of  good  agriculture  under  Roman 
influence,  others  as  merely  showing  that  the  population  was 

1  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  9. 

2  Wright,  Celt,  Roman,  and  Saxon,  p.  243  and  pp.  227  sq. 

8  Ashley,  Introduction  to  Coulanges'  Origin  of  Property  in  Land,  p.  xxiv. 
4  Professor  Ashley  mentions  this  himself,  p.  xxvi.        5  Of.  ib. ,  p.  xxv. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN  27 

so  small  that  it  could  not  consume  all  the  corn  it  grew.  In 
any  case,  "  the  great  private  estates  surrounding  the  villas 
of  wealthy  landowners,  and  cultivated  by  dependants  of 
various  grades — coloni,  freedmen,  and  slaves  "  1 — cannot 
have  been  numerous  enough  to  influence  the  agricultural 
development  of  the  country  as  a  whole.  Had  this  been  the 
case,  we  should  almost  certainly  find  more  traces  than  we 
do  of  the  Roman  implements  of  husbandry,2  which  are  well- 
known  and  continue  in  use  at  the  present  day,  with  very 
little  difference  in  their  structure,  in  those  countries  where 
Roman  influence  was  most  deeply  felt.  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  as  Mr  Seebohm  shows,3  though  he  draws  a  different 
conclusion  therefrom,  one  of  the  main  features  of  English 
husbandry  was  the  plough-team  of  eight  oxen,  common  to  the 
agriculture  of  England,  Wales  and  Scotland,  but  certainly 
not  Roman  in  origin.  Moreover,  the  remains  of  the  home- 
steads and  houses  of  early  English  villages  show  us  that 
Roman  influence  never  extended  very  markedly  into  agri- 
cultural buildings.  "  The  villager  in  his  wattle  and  daub, 
and  the  lord  in  his  oak-rooted  hall,  carry  us  back  to  primi- 
tive economics  within  which  there  is  no  room  for  the  great 
commercialism  of  the  Roman  world,"  4  and  it  is  a  significant 
fact  in  this  connection  that  the  art  of  making  bricks,  and 
building  in  brick,  introduced  by  the  Romans,  was  never 
taken  up  by  the  agricultural  population  as  a  whole,  but 
became  extinct  after  the  Roman  occupation  till  its  revival  in 
the  fifteenth  century.5 

§  16.   Celtic  and  Non-Rorrtan  Influence  in  Agriculture. 

The  same  conclusion — that  the  Roman  occupation  had 
little  practical  influence  with  the  agricultural  industry  of  the 
country,  except  in  a  few  favoured  districts  e — is  forced  upon 

1  Ashley,  as  above,  p.  xxv. 

2  E.g.  the  wheel-plough  ;  cf.  Gomme,  Village  Community,  p.  277. 

3  Seebohm,  Village  Community,  p.  388. 

4  Gomme,  Village  Community,  p.  46. 

8  Thorold  Rogers,  Econ.  Inter  p.  oj  Hist.,  p.  279. 

8  The  extent  of  the  Romanised  area  is  often  exaggerated.  The  North 
and  West  were  almost  untouched  by  Romans,  and  no  villas  are  found 
north  of  Aldborough  in  Yorks.  See  F.  T.  Richards  in  Social  England 
i.  p.  24. 


28  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

us  again  by  a  review  of  the  philological  and  ethnological 
evidence,  which  has  hitherto  been  almost  disregarded  by 
economic  historians.  Where  Eoman  power  was  greatest  in 
Britain  was  in  the  creation  of  a  national  government.  It 
hardly  so  much  as  entered  the  life  of  the  agricultural  village 
communities,1  in  which,  in  spite  of  the  influence  of  the 
Romanised  towns,  the  mass  of  the  population  of  Britain 
continued  to  dwell  from  the  first  dawn  of  civilisation  till  the 
advent  of  the  factory  system  and  its  concomitants.  Rome  had 
probably  no  more  effect  on  the  agricultural  life  of  the  people 
of  Britain  than  England  has  on  the  methods  of  the  peasant 
population  of  India,  and  when  we  hear  that  Britain  exported 
large  quantities  of  corn  in  the  Roman  era,  we  merely  note 
that  India  exports  equally  large  quantities  to  England  at  the 
present  day,  without  inferring  therefrom  that  the  Hindu  ryot 
has  adopted  English  agricultural  methods.  The  agricultural 
history  of  our  country  begins,  not  with  the  Roman  invasion, 
but  with  the  pre-historic  efforts  of  those  ancient  hill-tribes,2 
whose  industrial  relics  still  remain  for  our  investigation,  and 
who  cultivated  their  hill-sides  in  terraces,  because  these 
were  the  only  clearings  that  emerged  from  the  all-pervading 
primeval  forest.  This  is  the  reason  why  the  population, 
even  at  the  close  of  the  Roman  period,  was  most  numerous 
in  the  uplands.3  The  hillmen  gave  way  to  the  Celts, 
though  their  traces  are  still  among  us,  and  the  Celts,  with 
their  superior  culture,  developed  agriculture  probably  almost 
up  to  the  level  at  which  it  was  found  at  the  Saxon  conquest, 
and  at  which  it  remained  for  many  centuries  afterwards. 
The  philological  evidence  on  this  point  is  of  considerable 
interest.  An  extraordinary  number  of  words  in  our 
present  language  referring  to  agricultural  implements  and 
industry  are  of  Celtic  origin,  and  those  are  said  to  be  "  not 
a  twentieth  of  what  might  be  alleged."  4  A  few  instances 

1  Cf.  Gomme,  ut  supra,  p.  133. 

2  For  a  careful  investigation  of  this  evidence  see  Gomme,  Village  Com- 
munity, pp.  71,  83-95.  3  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  8. 

4  Garnett,  in  the  Journal  of  the  Philological  Society,  i.  171.  Among 
others  he  instances  : — bran  (skin  of  wheat),  cabin,  gusset  (cf,  Welsh,  cwysed, 
ridge  or  furrow),  threave  (a  bundle  of  sheaves,  W.,  drefa),  bill,  fleam  (W., 
flaim,  a  cattle  lancet),  wain,  wall,  trace,  stook  (of  corn),  gavelock  (a  fork), 
park  (  =  a  field),  filly,  fog  (= fog-grass),  basket,  &c.,  &c.  Measures  of 


ROMAN  BRITAIN  29 

are  given  in  the  footnote,  and  it  should  also  be  noticed,  as 
showing  the  permanence  of  ancient  populations  in  the  rural 
districts,  that  many  rural  or  "  provincial "  terms  l  are  Celtic 
in  origin.  The  survivals  of  curious  customs  connected  with 
land,  and  the  evidence  of  folk-lore  generally,  must  be  left  to 
the  archaeologist ; z  but  the  student  of  industrial  history 
cannot  fail  to  notice  the  persistence  of  ancient  populations, 
even  in  a  subject  condition,  and  their  influence  upon  indus- 
trial life.  Very  possibly  it  is  to  this  persistence  that  the 
backwardness  of  English  agriculture  for  so  many  centuries 
is  largely  due.  Learning  little  from  the  Roman,  the 
native  inhabitants  of  Britain  had  little  to  teach  the  Saxon. 
Even  now,  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  in  the 
remoter  districts  of  Ireland  the  heir  of  centuries  of  Celtic 
civilisation  may  be  seen  ploughing  with  his  rude  plough 
fastened  to  his  horse's  tail,3  while  in  the  Isle  of  Man  a 
farmer  of  the  present  generation  sacrificed  one  of  his  cattle 
at  the  cross  roads  to  cure  a  plague  which  was  destroying 
the  others.4  The  ethnological  evidence  has  of  late  been 
carefully  studied,  and  distinct  traces  of  an  earlier  (non-Aryan) 
population  have  been  found  in  many  places,  the  distin- 
guishing characteristics  of  this  early  race  being  their  dark 
hair,  dark  eyes,  dark  skin,  and  small  stature.  Such  traces 
are  seen  in  such  varying  localities  as  the  counties  compris- 
ing the  ancient  Siluria  —  Glamorgan,  Brecknock,  Mon- 
mouth,  Radnor,  and  Hereford — in  Cornwall  and  Devon, 
and  in  Gloucester,  Wiltshire,  and  Somerset.6  We  may 
grain  show  Celtic  origin — e.g.,  windle  (Lanes,  dialect  for  a  measure,  from 
W.,  gwyntell,  a  basket)  hoop  (Yorks.  for  a  quarter  peck),  hattock  (Yorks. 
for  a  shock  of  corn),  peck  (cf.  W.,  peg).  Also  flannen  (Hereford  for 
flannel),  frieze,  brat  (Yorks.  for  "pinafore,"  cf.  W.,  brat— clout;  rag),  mesh 
(cf.  W.,  masg,  a  stitch),  borel  (O.E.  for  coarse  cloth,  cf.  bureler),  lath,  &c., 
may  be  instanced  for  textile  industry.  Probably  a  careful  investigation  of 
rural  dialects  would  furnish  many  more. 

1  Besides  provincialisms  given  above,  cf.  Yorks.  toppin,  a  crest  or  ridge  ; 
silc,  a  strainer ;  Northern  stook,  a  shock  of  corn  ;  Somerset,  HOC,  a  plough- 
share, on  which  last  cj.  Schrader,  Sprachverglcichung  (Eng.  trans.),  p.  288. 

2  Cf.  Gomme,  ut  supra,  chs.  v.  and  vi. 

8  The  author  heard  this  stated  publicly  by  a  Notts  farmer  who  was  an 
eye-witness  during  a  visit  to  Ireland. 

4  Walpole,  Land  of  Home  Rule,  p.  190  n.     This  farmer  was  alive  in  1893. 

5  Elton,  Origin*,  p.  137,  with  which  cf.  the  note  on  p.  57  of  Cunning- 
ham's English  Industry  and  Commerce,  vol.  i. 


30  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

expect  to  find  survivals  in  the  west,  but  it  is  more 
surprising  to  discover  them  still  existing  in  the  eastern 
fen  country  and  in  the  Midlands — especially  round  about 
Derby,  Stamford,  Leicester,  and  Loughborough 1  —  for 
here  we  know,  from  place  names  and  other  evidence, 
that  the  Saxon  and  Danish  conquerors  settled  in  over- 
whelming numbers.  But  this  merely  proves  how  hard  it 
is  to  destroy  a  subject  population,2  and  if  the  non-Aryan, 
pre-Celtic  inhabitants  of  early  Britain  have  thus  sur- 
vived, a  fortiori  must  we  make  allowance  for  the  survival 
of  the  Celtic  races  who  succeeded  and  conquered  them,  only 
to  be  in  turn  conquered  themselves.  The  Celtic  race,  in 
spite  of  some  modern  appearances  to  the  contrary,  possesses, 
under  certain  circumstances,3  a  considerable  power  of  amal- 
gamation with  other  races  without  entirely  losing  its  dis- 
tinctive characteristics.  They  amalgamated  as  conquerors 
with  the  Iberians,4  and  as  conquered  with  the  Saxon  and 
Scandinavian,5  and  the  most  recent  historian  of  the  Isle 
of  Man,  where  their  influence  is  so  strongly  marked,  has 
called  attention  to  their  place  in  the  history  of  culture. 
"  We  live  in  a  time  when  the  Celtic  race  is  gradually 
disappearing.  Those  parts  of  Europe  where  Celtic  blood 
is  predominant  are  those  where  population  is  decreasing  (as 
in  Ireland)  or  with  difficulty  maintained  (as  in  France). 
Yet  we  ought  not,  in  consequence,  to  forget  the  great  part 
which  the  Celt  has  played  in  history,  or  the  influence  which 
the  Celt  has  exercised  in  the  civilisation  of  the  world."6 
Hitherto,  certainly,  the  economic  historian  has  neglected  to 
note  his  influence7  upon  English  agriculture,  an  influence 
which,  though  at  first  in  favour  of  progress  up  to  a 
certain  point,  was  probably  afterwards  rather  conservative 

1  Elton, «.  «. 

2  Cf.  also  S.  Walpole,  Land  of  Home  Rule,  p.  14,  and  also  p.  21,  for  de- 
scription of  the  Celtic  and  Iberian  population  as  existing  in  the  undisturbed 
isolation  of  the  Isle  of  Man  in  Roman  times. 

3  As  now  in  the  United  States.  *  Walpole,  »'&.,  p.  14. 

6  Strikingly  so  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  which  affords  a  very  favourable  field 
for  ethnological  study  ;  cf.  Walpole,  »&.,  p.  76.  6  Ib.,  p.  41. 

7  Though  some  admit  the  survival  of  many  of  the  Celtic  and  pre-Celtic 
population  (cf.  Ashley,  preface  to  F.  de  Coulanges'  Origin  of  Property  in 
Land,  p.  36),  they  forget  the  influence  which  these  must  have  exercised. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN  31 

or  even  retrogressive.  If  it  is  true,  as  Professor  Ashley 
puts  it,1  that  "  under  the  Celtic,  and  therefore  under  the 
Roman,  rule,  the  cultivating  class  was  largely  composed  of 
the  pre-Celtic  race,"  and  that  "  the  agricultural  population 
was  but  little  disturbed,"2  it  seems  clear  that  the  economic 
influence  of  such  a  population  must  have  been  very  marked. 
Such  indeed  we  shall  find  afterwards  to  be  the  case,  when 
we  come  to  investigate  more  closely  the  manorial  system  as 
it  appeared  in  Anglo-Saxon  and  Norman  times. 

§  17.   Commerce  and  Industry  in  Roman  Britain. 

But  before  proceeding  to  the  Saxon  period  we  must  in 
conclusion  give  a  short  glance  at  trade  and  industry  under 
the  Romans.  The  pax  Eomana  allowed  both  to  develop 
as  far  as  they  were  at  that  time  likely  to  do,  and,  though 
never  a  rich  country,  in  this  early  time8  Britain  was  cer- 
tainly not  a  land  of  poverty.  Agriculture  went  on,  as  it 
had  done  before  the  Romans  came,4  and  as  it  was  sure  to  do 
under  a  peaceful  regime,  while  mining  seems  to  have  been 
even  more  vigorously  carried  on  than  of  old.  Lead  was 
mined  in  the  Mendip  Hills,  Derbyshire,  and  elsewhere,  and 
became  so  abundant  that  its  output  was  limited  by  law ; 
copper  in  Anglesey  and  Shropshire  ;  iron  in  the  Forest  of 
Dean,  Hereford,  and  Monmouth ;  coal,  though  only  for 
home  use,  in  Northumberland ;  and  in  some  parts  a  little 
silver.5  The  roads  also  threw  those  parts  of  the  country 
through  which  they  passed  open  to  trade  and  intercourse, 
though  on  the  other  hand  in  later  periods  nothing  is  more 
striking  than  the  self-contained  character  of  the  villages, 
and  their  comparative  isolation  one  from  the  other.8  The 
harbours  of  the  south  and  south-east  coast  did  a  busy  trade 
with  Gaul,  whose  merchants  acted  as  intermediaries  between 
Britain  and  the  outer  world.  The  chief  British  exports 
seem  to  have  been,  besides  corn  and  the  minerals  already 

1  Ashley,  preface  to  F.  de  Coulanges'  Origin  of  Property  in  Land,  p.  37. 

2  CJ.  also  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xxxviii. 

1  Of.  F.  T.  Richards  in  Soc.  England,  vol.  i.  p.  93. 

4  Cf.  0.  M.  Edwards  in  Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  87. 

8  F.  T.  Richards  in  Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  92. 

8  Cf.  the  case  of  Bampton,  quoted  by  Gomme,  V.  C.,  p.  160. 


32  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

referred  to,  cattle  and  sheep,  the  skins  and  furs  of  wild 
animals,  wild  beasts  themselves  for  the  Roman  games, 
hunting  dogs,  and  a  large  number  of  slaves.  Kentish  oysters 
were  also  known  in  Rome.  Most  of  the  ordinary  clothing 
and  textile  fabrics  for  domestic  use  were  made  in  the  island 
itself,1  and  so  too  were  the  coarser  kinds  of  pottery,  and 
great  quantities  of  bricks  and  tiles.  The  imports  consisted 
of  a  limited  supply  of  the  finer  kinds  of  cloth  and  pottery 
for  the  use  of  the  upper  classes,  of  wine,  and  ivory,  amber, 
and  all  kinds  of  metallic  ornaments.2  Exports  were  almost 
certainly  in  excess  of  imports,  since,  like  all  provinces  sub- 
ject to  the  Roman  rule,  Britain  had  to  pay  heavy  taxes  to 
its  conquerors.  These  included  the  tributum,  or  property  and 
income-tax  ;  the  annona,  a  fixed  quantity  of  corn  for  the 
Roman  armies  in  Britain  and  on  the  Continent ;  and 
portoria,  or  import  duties.3  The  collection  of  the  last- 
named  was  made  at  the  harbours  with  which  our  coasts 
abounded,4  though  the  fact  that  these  harbours  were  so 
numerous,  and  the  ships  of  that  time  so  light  that  they 
could  run  in  almost  anywhere,  probably  caused  a  large 
amount  of  smuggling.  In  this  connection  it  should  be 
noticed  that  many  towns  standing  on  rivers,  now  inac- 
cessible to  our  large  ships,  were  used  as  ports  for  sea-going 
vessels,  both  in  Roman  and  in  mediaeval  times.  Such  were 
Exeter,  Lincoln,  Nottingham,  York,  and  a  host  of  others.5 
The  rivers  themselves  also  formed  natural  highways  into 
the  interior,  which  were  used  far  more  then  than  now6  in 
proportion  to  the  amount  of  trade  carried  on.  As  regards 
the  population,  it  is  impossible  to  form  an  exact  estimate. 
Caesar7  speaks  of  "  an  infinite  number  of  people  "  as  living 

1  They  also  knew  how  to  dye  these  in  purple,  scarlet,  and  other  colours. 
Pliny,  Hist.  Nat. ,  xvi.  8 ;  xxii.  26. 

2  The  Britons  were  very  fond  of  these,  using  brass  and  iron,  if  they  could 
not  get  gold.     Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  103. 

3  F.  T.  Kichards  in  Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  21.     A  five  per  cent,  legacy 
duty  was  also  levied  on  those  who  had  the  Roman  franchise. 

4  Euminius,  Pan.  Constant.,  c.  11.  and  cf.  "Innumerable  ports,  some 
since  silted  up  and  forgotten,  some  perhaps  buried  in  the  German  Ocean." 
Thorold  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  153. 

5  Social  England,  vol.  i.  p.  205. 

6  Cf.  examples  of  their  use  in  Continental  traffic  in  my  Commerce  in 
Europe,  §§  68,  09,  and  cf.  %  26.  7  Csesar,  B.  G.,  vi.  12. 


ROMAN  BRITAIN  33 

in  the  south-east,  and  the  story  of  the  sack  of  Verulamium, 
when  70,000  Romans  are  said  to  have  been  massacred,1 
although  the  number  is  probably  exaggerated,  yet  shows 
that  the  towns  at  least  were  populous.  The  condition  of 
agriculture  and  trade  also,  which  was  more  flourishing  than 
it  became  for  some  time  after  the  Saxon  conquests,  would 
lead  us  to  suppose  a  fairly  numerous  population,  though  the 
unreclaimed  and  wooded  nature  of  much  of  the  country 
prevented  it  fn.m  being  by  any  means  dense.  But,  on  the 
whole,  it  was  a  fairly  flourishing  province  and  people  on 
which  the  Saxons  descended. 

1  Tacitus,  Ann.,  xiv.  33. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    SAXON   PERIOD 

§  18.    The  Saxon  Invasions. 

THE  development  of  Roman  Britain,  after  proceeding  for 
three  and  a  half  centuries,  was  gradually  checked  by  the 
weakness  of  the  Roman  power.  As  everyone  knows,  Rome 
had  in  the  fifth  century  enough  to  do  in  defending  the 
Continental  portions  of  her  empire  without  troubling  about 
an  outlying  province  like  Britain.  The  Romans  were 
compelled  to  leave  Britain  to  its  fate,  and  their  legions 
had  to  quit  its  shores.  But  years  before  they  went  the 
Eastern  and  South-Eastern  coast  of  the  island  had  been 
harried  by  pirates  of  Teutonic  race,  "the  second  wave  ot 
the  Aryans,"  and  a  special  officer  had  to  be  appointed  to 
keep  them  in  check.  He  was  known  as  the  Count  (Comes) 
of  the  Saxon  shore,1  and  had  command  of  a  squadron  and  a 
line  of  nine  forts  extending  from  Brancaster  on  the  Wash  to 
Pevensey  on  the  coast  of  Sussex.  Besides  these  Saxon 
pirates,  the  Picts  and  Scots  raided  the  country,  venturing  on 
one  occasion  (368  A.D.)  as  far  south  as  the  banks  of  the 
Thames,  and,  thus  harassed  both  by  sea  and  land,  the  un- 
fortunate Britons  might  well  cry  out,  "  The  barbarians  drive 
us  to  the  sea ;  the  sea  to  the  barbarians ;  we  are  massacred 
or  must  be  drowned." 

In  course  of  time  the  barbarians  conquered  the  country. 
The  conquest  was  the  result  not  of  one  but  of  a  series  of 
invasions  and  expeditions,  which,  beginning  at  first  as  mere 
piratical  raids,  assumed  by  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century 
the  more  serious  aspect  of  victorious  colonisation  and  mi- 
gration.2 Into  the  details  of  that  conquest  we  have  not 
time  to  go,  but  it  has  been  picturesquely  and  minutely 

1 1.e.t  the  shore  infested  by  the  Saxon  pirates,  not  that  colonised  by  the 
Saxons,  as  some  think.  Cf.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist. ,  I.  c.  iv.  p.  19,  and  Free- 
man, Norman  Conquest,  I.  p.  11.  2  Stubbs,  Cowtt,  ffist.,  I.  iv.  p.  59, 


THE  SAXON  PERIOD  35 

described  by  tbe  graphic  author  of  the  Making  of  England. 
It  is,  however,  interesting  to  note  that  the  expeditions  of 
the  Saxon  invaders  were,  as  much  perhaps  from  the  nature 
of  the  country  as  from  the  manner  of  their  inception,  inde- 
pendent and  separate  one  from  the  other.  When  the  "  East 
Saxons "  landed  in  Essex,  proceeding  as  they  did  up  the 
valleys  of  the  Colne  and  Stour,  they  found  a  junction  with 
the  invaders  of  Kent  (even  had  they  wished  one)  blocked 
by  a  gigantic  forest,  which  prevented  further  progress  south- 
ward.1 But,  leaving  the  manner  and  details  of  the  con- 
quest to  others,  it  is  of  prime  importance  to  the  economic 
historian  to  discover  how  far  the  Saxons  destroyed  or  left 
undisturbed  the  inhabitants  of  the  conquered  country.  Here 
we  come  at  once  to  disputed  ground.  Some  have  thought 
that  they  practically  made  a  clean  sweep  of  all  the  institu- 
tions, both  Roman  and  British,  which  they  found,  and 
began  history  afresh  with  Teutonic  customs  and  manners 
both  in  political  and  industrial  life.2  "  The  Britons  fled 
from  their  homes ; 3  whom  the  sword  spared  famine  and 
pestilence  devoured  :  the  few  that  remained  either  refused 
or  failed  altogether  to  civilise  the  conquerors."  This  view 
is  based  upon  the  exaggerated  statements  of  mere  ecclesi- 
astical historians  like  Bede  and  Gildas,  who  had  a  natural 
prejudice  against  the  heathen  Saxons,  and  wished  to  draw  a 
dark  picture  of  the  sufferings  of  their  church.  It  is  adopted 
also  by  those  who  like  to  make  picturesque  generalisations 
from  striking  but  insufficient  data,  and  who  take  the  utter 
devastation  of  places  like  Andredes-C caster  as  typical  of 
vhat  happened  to  the  whole  country.4  A  truer  view  is  that 
which,  while  admitting  the  disappearance  of  many  of  the 
upper  class,  the  Romans  and  Romanised  Britons,  infers  from 
a  number  of  very  different  facts  the  survival  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  British  population.  "  The  common  belief  that 
the  Celtic  population  of  Britain  was  exterminated  or  driven 
into  Wales  and  Brittany  by  the  Saxons  has  absolutely  no 

1  Epping  and  Hainault  forests  are  its  relics  now.     Cf.  Airy,  Hist,  oj 
Eng.,p.  9. 

2  So  Stubbs,  I.  iv.  p.  61,  who  heads  one  paragraph  "  general  desolation." 

3  Ib. 

1  So  Green,  whose  judgment  seems  here  at  fault,  Short  History,  pp.  10, 
11  ;  and  his  numerous  followers— e. g. ,  Airy,  Hist.  ofEng.,  p.  10. 


36  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

foundation  in  history  "  ; x  and  the  great  Gibbon,  fully  as  he 
describes  the  havoc  wrought  by  the  Saxons  in  art,  religion, 
and  political  institutions,  carefully  points  out  that  this  does 
not  imply  the  extirpation  of  the  subject  population  itself. 
"  Neither  reason  nor  facts,"  he  says,  "  can  justify  the  un- 
natural supposition  that  the  Saxons  of  Britain  remained 
alone  in  the  desert  which  they  had  subdued.  After  the 
sanguinary  barbarians  had  secured  their  dominion,  it  was 
their  interest  to  preserve  the  peasants  as  well  as  the  cattle 
of  the  unresisting  country.  In  each  successive  revolution 
the  patient  herd  becomes  the  property  of  its  new  masters, 
and  the  salutary  compact  of  food  and  labour  is  silently 
ratified  by  their  mutual  necessities."2  Or,  as  a  less  cele- 
brated author  concisely  puts  it,  the  object  of  the  Saxon 
invaders  was  not  "  to  settle  in  a  desert,  but  to  live  at  ease, 
as  an  aristocracy  of  soldiers,  drawing  rent  from  a  peaceful 
population  of  tenants,"  3  and  we  may  add,  as  time  went  on, 
assisting  in  the  calm  pursuits  of  peace  themselves. 

The  facts  of  archaeology,  ethnology,  and  language,  to  some 
of  which  we  have  already  referred,  and  the  curious  survivals 
and  customs  of  the  manorial  system,  to  which  we  shall  come 
presently,  bear  out  this  supposition.  It  is  certain,  for 
instance,  that  there  is  a  large  proportion  of  Celtic  and  pre- 
Celtic  blood  in  the  population  even  of  the  east  of  England  as 
well  as  of  the  west,  and  the  English  language  itself,  which  has 
been  called  "  the  tongue  of  one  people  spoken  by  another," 
is  regarded  by  some  as  further  confirmatory  evidence.4 
Women  and  slaves  were  sure  to  have  been  kept  alive  rather 

1  Pearson,  Hist,  of  Eng.,  I.  p.  99.  2  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xxxviii. 

3  Pearson,  Hist,  of  Eng.,  I.  p.  101.     Cf.  also  Ashley  (preface  to  F.  de 
Coulanges'   Origin  of  Property  in  Land,   p.    32.),    "the  destruction  of 
Roman  or  Romanised  landowners  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  undisturbed 
residence  upon  the  rural  estates  of  the  great  body  of  actual  labourers." 

4  F.  York  Powell  in  Social  England,  Vol.  I.  p.  132.     On  the  other  hand, 
Prof.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  tfec.,  Vol.  I.  p.  60,  thinks  there 
must  have  been  ' '  a   general   displacement  of  population  to  allow  of  the 
introduction  of  a  new  speech  "  ;  but  there  are  plenty  of  historical  cases  to 
prove  the  contrary.     There  is  no  general  law  regulating  the  survival  of 
languages ;  sometimes  that  of  the  conqueror,  sometimes  that  of  the  con- 
quered prevails.    Cf.  Walpole,  Land  of  Home  Rule,  p.   76,  and  Taylor, 
Origin  of  the  Aryans,  p.  209.     The  Celtic  language  did  not  prevail  in 
France,  though  the  Celtic  race  has  remained.     The  destruction  of  the 


THE  SAXON  PERIOD  37 

than  uselessly  massacred ;  and,  in  fact,  we  may  readily 
believe  that  the  land  was  continuously  tilled  "  in  the  same 
fashion  and  chiefly  by  people  of  the  same  stock  "  from  the 
time  when  the  Romans  came,  or  before  it,  till  the  close  of 
the  middle  ages  and  the  more  modern  changes  in  agriculture.1 
It  has  been  well  observed  that  whereas  the  Roman  settler 
always  remained  outside  the  life  of  the  British  village  com- 
munity, the  Saxon  forced  his  way  into  it,2  and  the  whole 
development  of  English  social  and  industrial  history  is 
dominated  by  this  fact — the  intrusion  of  a  conquering  element 
into  a  conquered  community.3  Thus  the  manor,  as  we  shall 
see,  presents  to  us  two  main  elements,  the  seigneurial  and 
communal,  the  relations  of  tenants  to  their  lord  and  to  each 
other.  The  only  difficulty  is  to  distinguish  the  origin  of  each. 

§  19.  The  Saxon  Village  and  its  Inhabitants. 

For  the  present,  let  us  glance  at  the  inhabitants  of  the 
ordinary  English  village  as  we  find  them  much  later  when 
the  struggles  of  invader  and  invaded  have  ceased,  and  both 
are  living  peacefully  together.  It  is  at  the  village  that 
we  must  look,  not  at  the  town,  for  the  Saxon  disliked 
urban  life  and  was  essentially  a  dweller  in  villages. 

The  divisions  of  its  inhabitants  have  been  admirably 
summarised  by  Mr  York  Powell 4  in  the  following  manner : 
First  came  the  gentry,  including  the  thegen  (landlord  or 
"  squire  ")  and  parish  priest.  The  thegen  lived  on  his  own 
land  and  paid  for  it  by  special  duties  to  the  king,  to  whose 
following  (comitatus)  he  belonged ;  the  priest  also  lived 
on  the  land — i.e.,  the  glebe  with  which  his  patron  (probably 
the  thegen)  had  endowed  the  village  church.  Next  came 
the  farmer-class  of  yeomen  or  geneats,  corresponding  to 

Christian  religion,  on  which,  with  others,  Freeman  and  Cunningham  also 
rely  to  prove  the  disappearance  of  the  pre-Saxon  population,  means  very 
little.  Nothing  is  more  frequent  than  change  of  religion  by  half -civilised 
peoples,  as  witness  the  triumphs  of  Islam,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Christian  Church  in  Roman  Britain  was  only  the  religion  of  the  few,  and 
the  extent  of  its  influence  has  been  greatly  exaggerated  by  the  interested 
statements  of  ecclesiastical  historians. 

1  York  Powell,  ut  supra.     2  Gomme,  Village  Community,  pp.  41,  60,  147. 

3  Cf.  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage,  p.  303,  who  implies  this,  though  not  in  so 
many  words.  *  Social  England,  Vol.  I.  p.  124. 


38  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

tenant-farmers,  freemen  who  farmed  their  own  land,  or 
perhaps  farmed  their  lord's,  working  for  the  landlord  as  well 
as  paying  rent  to  him.  Thirdly  came  the  peasant  class  of 
cotsetlas,  or  cottagers,  and  geburs  or  copyholders,  the 
former  being  labourers  with  five  acres  of  land  to  support 
them  instead  of  receiving  wages,  and  the  latter  copyholders 
bound  to  heavy  services  or  "  task- work "  for  their  lord. 
The  fourth  class  were  the  labourers,  such  as  herdsmen, 
barnkeepers,  and  woodwards,  who  were  serfs,  and  were  paid 
partly  in  food  and  clothes,  and  partly,  if  they  were  village 
officials,  by  certain  perquisites  and  dues.  Distinct  from 
them  were  the  free  village  tradesmen,  such  as  the  hunter, 
fowler,  smith,  carpenter,  potter,  pedlar,  and  travelling 
merchants,1  who  either  took  service  under  a  lord  or  pur- 
sued their  occupation  independently. 

We  have,  therefore,  here  several  classes  whom  we  may 
classify  as  follow  : — • 

I.  Gentry  ("  of  gentle  rank  "),  including  (1)  the  thegen, 
(2)  the  priest. 

II.  Freemen,    including    (1)    the    geneat,  and    (2)    the 
tradesmen. 

III.  Unfree   men,    including    (1)   the   cotsetla,    (2)  the 
gebur,  (3)  the  labourers  and  serfs. 

To  which  we  should  add,  as  quite  distinct  from  the 
others,  the  small  class  of  slaves  (not  serfs),  such  as  the 
women-servants  and  menials  about  the  house  of  the  squire 
or  yeoman.  These  formed  a  small,  and,  as  time  went  on, 
a  diminishing  class,  though  for  centuries  the  export  trade 
in  slaves  was  a  dismal  feature  of  English  commerce. 

§  20.    Village  Life. 

The  life  of  the  villages  was  very  much  the  same  in 
Anglo-Saxon  times  as  it  has  always  been  in  agricultural 
districts,  and  must,  in  its  broad  features,  always  continue 
to  be.  We  need  only  make  allowances  for  differences  of 
degree  in  agricultural  progress.  It  is  very  fully  pictured 
to  us  in  the  illuminated  manuscripts  of  the  period,  and  in 

1  Those,  of  course,  had  their  houses  in  some  town,  but  travelled  from 
village  to  village  selling  their  wares. 


THE  SAXON   PERIOD  39 

the  Bayeux  tapestry.  The  early  part  of  the  year  was  taken 
up  with  ploughing,  digging,  and  sowing,  and  the  approach 
of  the  lambing  season ;  then  came  the  hay  and  grain 
harvest  and  sheep-shearing ;  while  the  autumn  brought 
with  it  extensive  preparations  for  winter  in  the  way  of 
killing  and  salting  cattle  for  food  in  the  winter  months 
and  storing  wood  for  h'res.  During  the  winter  itself 
threshing  and  winnowing  went  on,  and  most  of  the 
smith's  and  carpenter's  work  was  postponed  till  then,  while 
in  the  houses  the  women  were  busy  weaving  and  making 
rough  and  homely  garments  for  their  men.  The  most 
noticeable  features  in  rural  life  from  these  early  times 
right  up  to  the  sixteenth  century,  and  even  later,  were 
the  absence  of  winter  roots  for  cattle,  and  of  coal  for  their 
masters.  Roots,  and  even  carrots  and  parsnips,  were  then 
unknown  to  the  farmer,1  and  it  was  consequently  impos- 
sible for  him  to  keep  his  cattle  through  the  cold  weather. 
Hence  they  had  to  be  killed  and  salted,  and  could  never 
attain  to  the  excellence  of  our  modern  breeds.  The  absence 
of  coal  involved  the  use  of  large  quantities  of  firewood  in 
our  cold  climate,  and  hence  there  was  a  continual  and  in- 
creasing encroachment  upon  the  forests.  Fish  and  game 
were  fortunately  plentiful,  and  helped  to  relieve  the 
monotony  of  salt  meat,  and  eels  were  a  very  favourite  food,2 
being  found  in  greater  numbers  then  than  now  owing  to 
the  numerous  fens  and  marshes  that  occupied  so  many 
districts.  Though  it  was  impossible  to  keep  cattle  in  any 
great  numbers  through  the  winter,  oxen  were  used  for 
ploughing,  and  also  for  food,  and  sheep  were  valued  for 
their  wool,  which,  "  from  the  earliest  records,"  formed  an 
article  of  export  to  Flanders,3  and  was  afterwards  much 
more  largely  produced.  Large  numbers  of  swine  were 
kept,4  since  the  rearing  and  maintenance  of  these  was  far 
more  economical  than  that  of  cattle,  as  they  could  feed  on 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  78. 

2  So  much  so  that  rent  was  often  paid  by  a  stipulated  quantity  of  eels. 
Social  England,  Vol.  I.  p.  207. 

3 Thorold  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  78,  and  see  also  Macpherson,  i.  288. 
*  P.  H.  Newman  in  Social  England,  Vol.  I.  p.  213,  and  see  the  illumina- 
tion in  the  Cottonian  MSS. 


40  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  acorns  and  beech-mast  found  in  unlimited  quantities  in 
the  forests.  "  Pannage,"  or  food  for  swine,  is  frequently 
mentioned  in  Domesday,  being  given  as  for  over  thirty 
thousand  hogs  in  Hertfordshire  and  over  ninety  thousand 
in  Essex.  Beekeeping  was  an  important  industry,  the 
honey  being  used  both  for  mead  and  flavouring.1 

§  21.  Methods  of  Cultivation. 

As  regards  agriculture,  it  is  noticeable  that  at  one  time 
extensive  culture  was  common,2  as  at  Lauder,3  but  it 
gradually  was  given  up  in  favour  of  the  intensive  system. 
Special  fields  were  set  apart  for  cultivation  in  common 
as  permanent  arable  land  on  the  open  field  system,  and 
numerous  survivals  thereof  are  found  in  England  even  to 
the  present  day,  as  at  Laxton  in  Notts,  in  Cambridgeshire, 
and  elsewhere.4  Both  the  two-field  and  the  three-field 
system  were  employed,  one  field  lying  fallow  and  the  other 
being  under  crop  according  to  the  former  method,  while, 
under  the  latter,  two  out  of  three  fields  were  under  crops 
and  the  third  lay  fallow.5  Though  the  two-field  system, 
or  a  modified  form  of  it,6  was  not  uncommon,  the  three- 
field  one  became  eventually  more  usual.  The  crops  grown 
included  wheat,  rye,  oats,  and  barley,  with  beans  and 
pease.  The  fields  were  not  enclosed,  except  by  temporary 
fences,  which  were  removed  after  harvest  so  that  the  cattle 
might  feed,  and  strips  of  land  belonging  to  various  owners 
and  tenants  lay  intermingled  7  with  those  occupied  by  the 
others,  being  only  marked  off  by  "  balks  "  of  untilled  land. 
A  villein  generally  possessed  a  pair  of  oxen  along  with  his 
holding,  but  probably  the  various  small  tenants  combined 
their  teams  in  order  to  do  their  ploughing  more  effectively,8 
the  normal  team  being,  as  we  saw,  of  eight  oxen.9  Most 
of  the  operations  of  agriculture  were  performed  in  common, 

1  York  Powell,  Soc.  Eng.,  Vol.  I.  p.  124  ;  for  swine,  c/.  ib.,  p.  213. 
2 Cunningham,  i.  p.  20.      3  So  Cunningham,  but^.  Gomme,  V.  C.,  p.  150. 
4Seebohm,  Village  Community,  1-13. 
5  See  the  diagram  and  explanation  in  Cunningham,  i.  71. 
8 At  least  in  Germany,  cf.  Hanssen,  Agrarhist.  Abh.,  i.  178.     In  some 
districts  of  England  also  both  systems  existed  side  by  side. 
7  Laws  oflne,  42  {Thorpe,  i.  129).  8  Cunningham,  i.  73 

"Seebohm,  V.  C.,  p.  388. 


THE  SAXON  PERIOD  41 

or  by  men  whom  the  village  community  as  a  whole  paid, 
or  rather  supported,  and  who  did  certain  work,  such  as 
thatching,  swine-herding,  or  ploughing,  in  return  for  their 
keep.1  This  common  system  of  agriculture  naturally  pro- 
duced only  poor  results,  and  prevented  improvement  by 
individual  enterprise,  but  it  sufficed  for  the  simple  re- 
quirements of  those  days,  and  was  in  harmony  with  the 
economic  ideas  of  the  age. 

§  22.  Isolation  of  Villages.  Crafts  and  Trades. 
Each  of  the  separate  communities  living  in  these  villages, 
or  in  the  small  towns  that  were  now  growing  up,2  was  on 
the  whole  very  much  cut  off  from  its  neighbours.  Partly 
because  of  the  disunion  and  conflicts  that  for  many  years 
prevailed  among  the  various  Saxon  conquerors,  and  partly 
owing  to  the  difficulties  of  intercommunication  when  the 
Roman  roads  were  no  longer  kept  up,  and  from  many  other 
causes,  the  villages  were  very  much  disinclined  for  mutual 
intercourse,  and  endeavoured  to  be,  as  far  as  possible,  each 
a  self-sufficing  economic  unit,  obtaining  their  food  and 
clothing,  coarse  and  rough  though  it  generally  was,  from 
their  own  flocks  and  herds  and  from  their  own  land. 
Hence  only  the  simplest  arts  and  domestic  manufactures 
were  carried  on  by  the  people  at  large,  such  as  the  crafts  of 
the  iron  and  coppersmith,  the  shoemaker,  and  the  carpenter. 
It  is,  however,  proper  to  notice  the  important  part  which 
the  monasteries  played  as  centres  of  industrial  life.  The 
larger  monasteries,  such  as  those  of  St  Edmunds  or 
Glastonbury,  were  great  industrial  centres,3  and  it  was  the 
monks,  or  the  foreign  workmen  introduced  by  them,  who 
brought  to  a  high  degree  of  perfection  the  arts  of 
embroidery  and  weaving,  and  of  glass  and  metal  work  for 
ornamental  purposes.4  St.  Dunstan,6  among  others,  is  said 
to  have  encouraged  metal  work.  But  the  great  mass  of 
the  people  cared  little  for  such  arts. 

1  Cunningham  quotes  instances  from  Saxon  and  Welsh  sources  on  p.  74 
of  vol  i.,  Orowth  of  English  Industry. 

2  On  the  growth  of  towns,  see  later,  p.  86  et  seq. 

3  A.  L.  Smith  in  Social  England,  Vol.  I.  p.  207. 

4  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  78. 

8  Will,  of  Malm.,  Vita  S.  Dunstani,  ch.  ix.  p.  262  ;  Stubbs'  Memorial*  qf 
St  Dunstan  (cd.  1874). 


42  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

But  however  strongly  a  community  may  desire — or  feel 
it  necessary — to  be  self-sufficing,  it  can  never  be  so  entirely. 
Differences  of  soil,  of  mineral  wealth,  and  of  other  advantages 
cause  one  community  to  lack  that  which  another  has  in 
abundance.  Salt,  for  instance,  was  very  largely  in  request 
(as  we  have  seen)  for  salting  meat  for  winter  use,  and  some 
idea  of  the  importance  of  the  salt  manufacture  of  that 
period  may  be  obtained  from  the  fact  that  in  six  shires  no 
less  than  727  salt  works  are  named  in  Domesday  as  paying 
rent  to  their  lords.  But  it  cannot  be  universally  procured 
in  England,  any  more  than  iron  and  other  necessaries  of  life. 
Hence  internal  trade,  however  limited,  was  still  sure  to 
arise,  and  we  find  evidence  of  its  recognised  existence  in 
the  laws  of  Ine,1  which  require  that  "  chapmen "  should 
trade  before  witnesses.  This  proves  the  existence  of  a  dis- 
tinct class  of  traders,  and  it  is  also  certain  that  local  markets 
likewise  existed.  At  first  these  were  always  held  on  the 
neutral  boundaries  between  the  territories  of  two  or  more 
villages  or  communities,2  the  place  of  the  market  being 
marked  by  a  boundary  stone,  the  origin  of  the  later 
"  market  cross."  Sunday  seems  to  have  been  the  usual 
market  day,  till  the  influence  of  the  church  altered  it  to 
Saturday.3  Sometimes  also,  besides  these  local  markets, 
larger  ones  were  held  at  stated  times  during  the  year  in  well- 
known  localities,  and  the  shrines  of  saints  were  among  the 
most  frequented  spots  for  this  purpose.  These  fixed 
markets  often  developed  into  towns.  Thus  the  origin  of 
Glasgow  may  be  traced  to  the  fair  held  at  the  shrine  of  St 
Ninian  (570  A.D.),4  and  many  other  instances  of  the 
religious  origin,  not  only  of  fairs  but  also  of  towns 
themselves,  might  thus  be  quoted.  These  markets  were 
productive  of  great  revenue  to  the  lord  of  the  manor  in 
which  they  were  held  ;  that  at  Taunton 6  brought  in 

1  Laws  of  Ine,  25  ;  Thorpe,  i.  118. 

2  A  good  example  of  this  is  Moreton-in-Marsh,  an  ancient  market  town 
situated  on  the  boundaries  of  the  four  counties  of  Oxford,  Gloucester, 
Worcester,  and  Warwick.     The  fact  is  recorded  by  a  stone,  known  as  the 
"four  shires'  stone,"  and  situated  about  a  mile  from  the  present  town 
along  the  London  road. 

3  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  74.  4  Cunningham,  i.  90. 

5  For  Taunton  markeb  dues,  cf.  Thorpe,  Dip.  Aug.,  235;  and  Social 
England,  i.  208. 


THE  SAXON  PERIOD  43 

£2,  10s.  a  year  in  fees,  and  that  at  Bedford  £7,  and  we 
shall  have  occasion  to  mention  them  as  factors  in  the 
growth  ot  towns  in  another  chapter  (pp.  87,  89). 

It  seems  that  in  the  early  days  of  the  Saxon  settlement, 
trade  at  the  markets  and  fairs  was  largely  carried  on  by 
simple  bartering  of  commodities.  Mere  barter,  however,  is 
tedious  and  cumbersome  ;  and  although  up  to  a  late  period 
of  the  Saxon  settlement  a  large  proportion,  though  not  the 
whole,  of  English  trade  proceeded  in  this  fashion,1  the  use 
of  coined  money  for  the  purposes  of  exchange  became 
common  in  the  ninth  century,  while  in  900  A.D. 
regular  money  payments  are  recorded  as  being  made  by 
tenants  to  their  landlords.2  And  when  we  come  to  the  levy 
of  Danegeld  (991  A.D.),  it  is  clear  from  the  very  imposition 
of  such  a  tax  that  metallic  money  must  have  been  widely 
diffused  and  in  general  circulation. 

§  23.  Foreign  Commerce  and  the  Danes. 

Trade  of  all  kinds  had  suffered  a  severe  blow  when  the 
Romans  quitted  Britain,  but  even  during  the  Saxon  period 
English  merchants  still  carried  on  a  certain,  though  limited, 
amount  of  foreign  commerce.  This  commerce  was  greatly 
stimulated  by  the  Danish  invasions  and  settlements.  It  is 
a  curious  fact  that  so  many  of  the  names  of  towns  and 
places  on  our  coast  have  Scandinavian  forms,  as  e.g.,  those 
terminating  in  -ness,  -vick,  and  -by,  and  it  is  said  to 
show  that  our  maritime  trade,  not  only  in  the  Danish  dis- 
tricts, but  even  outside  them,  was  mainly  in  the  hands  of 
northern  traders.3  But  this  is  not  surprising  when  we 
remember  that  the  Danes,  before  ever  they  came  to 
England,  were  most  enterprising  navigators,  as  is  shown  by 
their  very  early  commerce  with  Russia  and  the  East,4  their 
colonisation  of  Iceland  (874  A.D.),  and  their  discoveries  of 
Greenland  (985  A.D.)  and  the  east  coast  of  North  America.6 

1  Of.  Craik,  Hist.  Brit.  Commerce,  i.  83,  84.  Slaves  and  cattle  were  used 
as  media  of  exchange.  2  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  112. 

a  The  point  is  noted  by  A.  L.  Smith  in  Social  England,  i.  p.  201. 

4  Cunningham,  i.  84. 

*  Of.  fully  Mallet's  Northern  Antiquities,  ch.  ix.,  and  the  supplementary 
chapter  in  Bohn's  edition,  p.  244. 


44  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

Though  they  were  cruel  and  savage  pirates,  they  were 
traders  also,  and,  when  they  had  settled  down,  as  they  did  in 
such  large  numbers  in  the  North  and  East  of  England,1  they 
formed  an  active  industrial  and  mercantile  population,  and 
often  became  merchants  of  great  importance.  To  the  Danes 
also  we  may  trace  the  beginnings  of  some  of  our  towns,2  since 
their  merchants  required  fixed  centres  for  their  commerce. 
"  The  Danes  and  Northmen,"  says  Professor  Cunningham,3 
"were  the  leading  merchants,  and  hence  it  was  under  Danish 
and  Norse  influences  that  the  villages  [which  afterwards 
became  towns]  were  planted  at  centres  suitable  for  com- 
merce, or  that  well-placed  villages  received  a  new  develop- 
ment." Besides  this  they  were  instrumental  in  causing 
English  trade  to  develope  with  the  North  of  Europe,  and, 
generally  speaking,  gave  a  needed  stimulus  to  navigation, 
which  the  Saxons  for  some  unaccountable  reason  neglected 
as  soon  as  they  settled  down  in  England.  A  sign  of  their 
influence  is  seen  in  the  "  doom  "  or  decree,  probably  of  the 
tenth  century,  which  provided  that  "  if  a  merchant  thrived 
so  that  he  fared  thrice  over  the  sea  by  his  own  means,  then 
was  he  of  thegen-right  worthy  "  4  —  and  this  thegen-right  gave 
him  a  comparatively  high  rank.  The  settlement  of  German 

1  Their  presence  is  still  so  clearly  perceptible  in  the  place-names,  pro- 
vincial words,  and  the  physique  of  the  population  of  these  districts,  that 
we  need  not  further  enlarge  upon  the  abiding  nature  of  their  influence. 
It  will  be  sufficient  to  note  briefly  the  extent  of  the  "Danelagh"  (at 
given  by  F.  York  Powell,  Soc.  Eng.  ,  i.  p.  145). 

Middlesex  and  Essex,  Saxon  land  chiefly  settled  by  Danes. 
Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  East  English  land  do.  do. 

Bucks,  Northants,     ]    Land    of    the    English     of    the    March, 
Herts,  Beds,     >   settled    chiefly    by    Danes,    but   also   by 

Cambs,         Hunts,    )    Northmen. 

Lincoln,  Leicester,    \ 

he  English  of  the  March,  settled 

Northmen. 


ncon,      eceser,    \ 
D    bv  N  tt       (_    kand  °*  * 

Stamford  district?    )     chiefly  by 


Yorks  and  part  of  Durham,  North  English  land  settled  chiefly  by 
Northmen. 

2  The  five  Danish  boroughs  of  Derby,  Nottingham,  Lincoln  Leicester, 
and  Stamford  had  a  most  complete  municipal  constitution. 

3  English  Industry  and  Commerce,  i.  88. 

4  Ranks,  6  ;    Thorpe,  i.  193.      It  was  probably    passed    in  Athelstan's 
reign,  Craik,  i.  66. 


THE  SAXON  PERIOD  45 

merchants  in  London,1  pointing  to  an  increasing  continental 
traffic,  also  dates  from  the  time  of  Ethelred  the  Unready 
(about  1000  A.D.). 

Much  of  this  foreign  trade,  such  as  it  was,  and  it  certainly 
was  not  very  great,  lay  in  the  quantities  of  precious  metals 
and  stuff  for  embroideries  which  were  imported  for  use  in 
the  monasteries  (p.  41).  A  good  list  of  such  imports  is 
given  by  the  merchant  who  is  supposed  to  speak  in  ^Elfric's 
Saxon  Dialogues?  He  mentions  purple,  silk,  gems,  ivory, 
gold,  dyed  stuffs,  dyes,  wine,  oil,  brass,  tin,  glass,  and 
sulphur ;  while  the  dangers  of  the  foreign  traders  calling 
are  pithily  expressed  in  his  remark,  that  "sometimes  I 
suffer  shipwreck  with  the  loss  of  all  my  goods,  scarcely 
escaping  myself."  Besides  the  imports  mentioned  here  we 
may  add  furs  and  skins  (which  came  gradually  to  be  im- 
ported instead  of  exported,  as  wild  animals  died  out  in 
England),  weapons  of  war,  and  iron-work.  The  exports 
which  were  exchanged  for  these  were  chiefly  raw  products, 
including  wool — which  afterwards  became  more  and  more 
important — cattle,  and  horses,3  with  tin,  lead,  and  possibly 
iron.  There  was  a  very  large  export  trade  in  slaves,  and 
their  prices  are  recorded  in  the  laws  of  the  period.4  Bristol 
was  a  great  centre  of  this  sad  traffic,5  and  remained  so  till 
the  twelfth  century,  and  English  and  Danish  slaves  formed 
an  important  merchandise  in  the  markets  of  Germany. 
The  devout  Gytha,  Earl  Godwin's  wife,  is  said  to  have 
shipped  whole  gangs,  especially  of  young  and  pretty  women, 
for  sale  in  Denmark.6  As  in  many  modern  instances,  her 
piety  was  not  allowed  to  prejudice  her  pocket.  As  regards 
the  travels  of  English  merchants,  we  know  that  they  went 
as  far  as  Marseilles,  and  frequented  the  great  French  fairs 
of  Rouen  and  St  Denis 7  in  the  ninth  century ;  while, 
rather  earlier,  we  have  a  most  interesting  document,  our 

1  Craik,  Hist.  Brit.  Comm.,  i.  68. 

8  See  Thorpe,  Analecta  Anglo-Saxonica,  p.  101. 

8  These  are  mentioned  in  a  law  of  Athelstan,  Craik,  i.  71. 

4  Leges   Wallice,  II.   xvii.  30,  31,  and  II.  xxii.  13.     The  price  was  one 
pound  of  silver,  or  a  pound  and  a  half  "  if  brought  from  across  the  sea." 

5  William  of  Malmesbury,  Vita  Wlfatani,  ii.  20,  and  Craik,  i.  71. 

8  Pearson,  Hist,  of  Eny.,  i.  287.  7  Cunningham,  i.  80. 


46  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

first  treaty  of  commerce  in  fact,1  dated  796  A.D.,  by  which 
Karl  the  Great,  or  Charlemagne,  as  he  is  sometimes  called, 
grants  protection  to  certain  English  traders  from  Mercia. 
In  King  Alfred's  days,  one  English  bishop  is  said  to  have 
"penetrated  prosperously"  as  far  as  India,2  bearing  the 
King's  gifts  to  the  shrine  of  St  Thomas,  on  the  Malabar 
coast,  but  this  is  an  isolated  case,  and  though  Alfred  tried 
to  encourage  navigation  by  his  care  for  the  navy,8  and  by 
his  interest  in  the  adventurous  voyages  of  Othere  and 
Wulfstan,4  the  fact  remains  that  foreign  merchants,  includ- 
ing Jews,5  came  to  England  in  greater  numbers  than  the 
English  ventured  abroad. 

§  24.  Summary  of  Trade  and  Industry  in  the  Saxon 
Period. 

Taking  a  general  survey  of  the  period  between  the  Saxon 
and  the  Norman  conquests,  we  see  that  crafts  and  manu- 
factures were  few  and  simple,  being  limited  as  far  as  possible 
to  separate  and  isolated  communities.  The  fine  arts,  and 
works  in  metal  and  embroideries,  were  confined  to  the 
monasteries,  which  also  imported  them.  The  immense 
mineral  wealth  of  the  island  in  iron  and  coal  was  practically 
untouched.  Trade,  both  internal  and  foreign,  was  small, 
though  it  developed  as  the  country  became  more  peaceful 
and  united.  The  great  mass  of  the  population  was  engaged 
in  agriculture,  and  every  man  had,  so  to  speak,  a  stake  in 
the  land  and  belonged  to  a  manor  or  an  overlord.  A  landless 
man  was  altogether  outside  the  pale  of  social  life.  Land, 
in  fact,  was  the  basis  of  everything,6  and  it  is  for  this  reason 
that  it  is  so  important  to  understand  the  conditions  of 
tenure  and  the  whole  land  system  of  that  age.  Hence  we 
must  occupy  a  short  time  in  the  discussion  of  the  origin  of 
the  manorial  system,  which  at  the  close  of  the  Saxon  period 
we  find  in  force  throughout  the  country. 

1  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  iii.  496. 

2  So  William  of  Malmesbury,  Gesta  Pontif.,  ii.  80. 

8  Gf.  Craik,  Hist.  Brit.  Commerce,  i.  65.  4  In  big  Orosius. 

6  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  63,  64. 

6  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  v.  pp.  74,  79. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   MANOR    AND   THE   MANORIAL    SYSTEM 

§  25.  The  Interest  of  the  Question  as  to  the  Origin  of  the 

Manor. 

THE  question  of  the  origin  of  the  English  manor,  however 
abstract  and  academic  it  may  at  first  appear,  is  in  reality 
one  of  the  most  interesting  of  all  social  topics.  When  the 
manor  is  clearly  distinguished  as  a  social  factor  in  the 
historical  period,  it  always  involves  two  elements — the 
seigneurial  and  the  communal,  the  lord  on  the  one  hand,  and 
on  the  other  his  dependants,  who  do  their  work  and  hold 
their  land  in  common.  The  question,  therefore,  at  once 
arises  as  to  which  of  these  two  elements  is  the  older  ?  Is 
the  manor  the  result  of  the  subjection  of  an  originally  free 
community  to  an  overlord,  or  was  there  always,  even  in  the 
beginnings  of  social  life,  a  dependent  and  servile  population 
who  tilled  the  land  for  the  benefit  of  others  ?  According 
as  history  decides  one  way  or  the  other,  it  will  influence 
our  views  on  the  laud  question  in  general,  including  the 
discussions  even  of  the  present  day.  From  one  point  of 
view  we  shall  be  inclined  to  think  that  the  present  system 
of  private  property  in  land  is  the  system  which,  in  one 
form  or  another,  has  existed  from  the  beginning,  and  is  the 
outcome  of  social  forces  which  have  their  justification  in 
the  earliest  pages  of  history.  From  another  point  of  view 
we  may  hold  that  property  in  land  did  not  exist  at  all  in 
early  times,  but  that  the  land  was  held  in  common  for  the 
good  of  all,  while  the  ownership  of  it  was  vested  only  in 
the  nation,  so  that  the  present  system  of  private  owner- 
ship is  the  degenerate  outcome  of  centuries  of  appropriation 
of  common  property  by  individuals,  whose  title  to  it  was  in 
many  cases  more  or  less  doubtful.  Hence  reformers  like 
Henry  George  maintain  that  we  ought  to  revert  to  common 
ownership  of  land  as  being  the  only  natural  condition  and 

47 


48  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

basis  of  social  and  economic  life,  though,  on  the  other  hand, 
so  great  an  authority  as  Sir  Henry  Maine  has  declared  that 
the  change  from  common  to  private  ownership  is  the  sign 
of  an  advancing  civilisation.  Whatever  view  we  hold,  it  is 
obvious  that  the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  manor  and 
of  property  in  land  is  of  more  than  usual  interest. 

§  26.  The  Mark  Theory  and  the  Manor. 
During  the  present  century,  owing  to  the  valuable  labours 
of  a  number  of  German  and  English  historians,1  some  writers 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  (though  it  is  much  disputed) 
that  in  very  early  times,  before  the  Germanic  tribes,  after- 
wards called  English,  had  crossed  over  to  England,  or  per- 
haps even  before  they  had  settled  down  in  Europe,  all  land 
was  held  in  common  by  various  communities.  Each  com- 
munity contained  a  few  families,  or  possibly  a  whole  tribe. 
The  land  occupied  by  this  community  had  been  cleared 
away  from  the  original  forests  or  wastes  where  they  had 
settled,2  and  was  separated  from  that  of  other  communities 
by  a  boundary  or  mark,  a  name  which  in  course  of  time 
came  to  be  applied  not  to  the  boundary  but  to  the  land 
itself  thus  portioned  off.2  Within  this  mark  was  the 
primitive  village  or  township,  where  each  member  of  the 
community  had  his  house,  and  where  each  had  a  common 
share  in  the  land.  This  land  was  of  three  kinds : — (1) 
The  forest  and  waste  land,  from  which  the  mark  had  been 
originally  cleared,  useful  for  rough  natural  pasture,  but 
quite  uncultivated  ;  (2)  The  pasture  land,  including,  per- 
haps, meadows?  sometimes  enclosed  and  sometimes  open,  in 
which  each  mark-man  looked  after  his  own  hay,  and  stacked 
it  for  the  winter.  This  land  was  sometimes  divided  into  allot- 
ments for  each  member ;  (3)  The  arable  land,  which  also 
was  divided  into  allotments  for  each  mark-man.  But  a  man's 
rights,  whether  in  the  allotments  or  in  the  common  pastures 
and  forests,  were  of  the  nature  of  usufruct  only,  his  title  to 
absolute  ownership  being  merged  in  the  general  title  of  the 

1  Including  Kemble,  K.  Maurer,  Stubbs,  Freeman,  Gneist,  Maine,  and 
especially  G.  F.  von  Maurer  and  Hanssen.     For  a  careful  summary  of  the 
views  of  each  see  VinogradofPs  able  Introduction  in  his  Villeinage  in  England. 

2  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  i.  p.  49,  ch.  iii.,   who  gives  a  good  summary  of 
the  mark  system.  3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  i.  49. 


THE  MANOR  AND  MANORIAL  SYSTEM    49 

tribe,  which,  however,  he  of  course  shared  with  the  rest.1 
To  settle  any  question  relating  to  the  division  or  use  of  the 
land,  such  as  the  choice  of  the  meadow,  the  rotation  of 
crops,  or  the  allotment  of  the  shares  of  land,  or  to  decide 
any  other  business  of  common  importance,  the  members  of 
the  mark,  or  mark-men,  met  in  a  common  council  called 
the  mark-moot 2 — an  institution  of  which  relics  are  said  to 
have  survived  for  many  centuries.3  This  council,  and  the 
mark  generally,  formed,  it  was  said,  the  political,  social, 
and  economic  unit  of  the  early  English  tribes,  but  now  this 
view  is  not  supported  by  scholars,  except  as  regards  agri- 
cultural arrangements.  The  mark  probably  did  not  exist 
in  the  form  just  sketched  out  when  these  tribes  first  occupied 
England,  though  there  may  have  been  some  modification  of 
it  introduced.  It  had  probably  already  undergone  consider- 
able transformation  towards  what  is  called  the  manorial 
system  and  private  ownership.4  But  those  who  hold  the 
mark  theory  maintain  that  many  traces  of  it  still  remain 
even  now.  Our  commons,6  still  numerous  in  spite  of 
hundreds  of  enclosures,  the  manorial  courts,6  and  the  names 
of  places  ending  in  -ing — a  termination  which  implies  a 
family  settlement 7 — are  evidences  which  remain  among  us 
even  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century.  And,  of  course, 
it  is  to  the  mark  system  that  the  communal  element  in  our 
early  and  mediaeval  English  agriculture  is  supposed  to  be  due. 

§  27.   Criticisms  of  the  Mark  Theory. 

Leaving  for  the  moment  the  consideration  of  the  truth  or 
inaccuracy  of  the  mark  theory,  we  find,  at  any  rate  at  the 
time  when  the  Saxon  settlement  in  England  had  been  com- 
pleted, that  a  very  different  system  prevailed,  namely,  the 
manorial  system.  The  word  "  manor "  is  a  Norman  word 
for  the  Saxon  "  township "  or  community,8  and  it  differs 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  i.  p.  49. 

-  Stubbs,  i.  p.  51.  The  word  mearemot  (found  A.D.  971)  was  instanced 
by  Kemble,  but  Anglo-Saxon  scholars  do  not  think  that  mark  in  this  con- 
nexion means  more  than  a  "  boundary."  Cf.  Earle,  Land  Olutrters,  p.  45. 

3  Stubbs,  p.  84.  «  76.,  p.  75.  B  76.,  p.  84,  •  76. 

7  Stubbs,  Count.  Hint.,  I.  ch.  v.  p.  81 ;  Taylor,  Words  and  Places,  132. 

8  So  Ordericus  Vitalis,  iv.  7;  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  v.  p.  89, 
and  ch.  ix.  p.  273. 

D 


SO  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

from  the  mark  in  that  the  mark  was  a  group  of  house- 
holds or  persons  organised  and  governed  on  a  communal 
and  democratic  basis,  while  in  the  manor  we  find  an  auto- 
cratic organisation  and  government,  whereby  a  group  of 
tenants  (not  independent  "markmen")  acknowledge  the 
superior  position  and  authority  of  a  "lord  of  the  manor." 
The  great  feature  of  the  manor  is,  in  fact,  this  subjection  to 
a  lord,  who  owned  absolutely  a  certain  portion  of  the  land 
therein  and  had  rights  of  rent  (paid  in  services,  food,  or 
money,  or  in  all  three)  over  the  remainder.  On  the  other 
hand  the  tenants  had  certain  rights  as  against  the  lord,1 
but  these  and  the  questions  connected  with  these  we  must 
leave  till  later. 

Such  are  the  distinctive  features  of  the  mark  and  the 
manor.  The  point  to  be  now  considered  is :  how  did  the 
one  result  from  the  other  ?  It  seems  very  probable  that 
the  manorial  system  must  have  been  the  result  of  conquest, 
but  if  so,  who  were  the  conquerors  that  imposed  it  upon 
their  subjects  ?  Were  they  the  Anglo-Saxons,  or  the 
Romans,  or  the  pre-Roman  invaders  of  Britain  ?  If  the 
conquerors  were  the  Saxons,  then  it  follows  that  they  them- 
selves had  already  developed  beyond  the  mark  system  before 
they  came  to  these  islands.  It  was  at  one  time  thought 
that  the  manorial  system  grew  up  in  the  later  periods 
of  the  Saxon  conquest,  but  received  the  form,  with  which 
mediaeval  documents  make  us  familiar,  only  shortly  before 
the  Norman  rule,  and  assumed  many  of  its  features  under 
Norman  influence.  But  it  is  now  more  generally  accepted 
that  the  manorial  system  was  in  existence  as  the  prevailing 
form  of  social  organisation  very  soon  after  the  Saxon  invasion.2 

1  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage  in  England,  pp.  174,  176. 

2  This  is  the  net  result  of  Mr  Seebohm's  valuable  labours.     He  thinks 
that  the  Roman  villa  presents  all  the  essential  features  of  an  English 
manor,  and  thus  implies  that  the  Saxon  lords  of  the  manors  merely  stepped 
into  the  shoes  of  their  Roman  predecessors.     In  an  essay  more  recent  than 
his  book  on  the   Village  Comrmtnily,  he  seems  inclined  to  ante-date  the 
feudal  side  of  the  manorial  system  still  further.     "The  British  village 
community  was  already  a  good  deal  feudalised  "  before  the  Saxon  conquest  j 
possibly  (under  the  influence  of  Belgic  Gauls  of  the  S.  E. )  even  before  the 
Roman  conquest.     See  his  valuable  critique  of  VinogradoF  in  t,h« 
Historical  Review,  Vol.  VII.,  No.  27  (July  1892). 


THE  MANOR  AND  MANORIAL  SYSTEM     51 

Certainly  we  have  hardly  any  satisfactory  evidence  of  the 
mark  itself  in  England,  though,  as  we  noted  just  above, 
survivals  of  its  influence  are  found.  And,  indeed, 
many  authorities  of  great  weight  have  gone  so  far  as  to 
deny  that  the  mark  ever  had  any  existence,  whether  in 
England  or  Europe,  except  in  the  mistaken  theories  of 
Teutonic  historians.  Those  who  reject  the  mark  theory  do 
so  largely  because  they  argue  that  the  servile  and  depen- 
dent cultivators  of  the  manorial  system  lead  us  back,  not 
to  an  originally  free,  but  to  an  originally  servile  population. 
They  deny  that  the  communal  element  is  ever  seen  where 
it  can  be  proved  that  the  cultivating  group  are  proprietors  ; 
it  is  only  found  among  dependants  or  tenants,  not  among 
free  men.  "  Where  the  cultivating  group  are  in  any 
real  sense  proprietors  they  have  no  corporate  character,  and 
where  they  have  a  corporate  character  they  are  not  pro- 
prietors." l  They  combat,  moreover,  the  very  facts  and 
quotations  from  ancient  writers  upon  which  advocates  of 
the  mark  theory  base  their  inferences.  Apart  from  the 
powerful  work  of  Mr  F.  Seebohm  in  his  Village  Community, 
perhaps  the  most  concise  and  certainly  the  most  violent 
attack  upon  the  holders  of  the  mark  theory  is  that  made 
by  Fustel  de  Coulanges  in  his  essay  on  the  Origin  of 
Property  in  Land.2  He  first  challenges  the  meaning 
given  to  certain  passages  of  Caesar  and  Tacitus  3  by  G.  F. 
von  Maurer,  and  then  tries  to  show  that  in  early  German 
law  mark  means  "  a  boundary  "  primarily,  and  secondly  a 
piece  of  private  property,  and  that  private  property  in  land 

1  W.  J.  Ashley,  criticising  Maine  in  Note  A  to  his  own  Introduction  to 
F.  de  Coulanges'  Origin  of  Property  in  Land,  p.  xlvii. 

3  It  first  appeared  in  Revue  den  Questions  Historiquev,  April  1889,  and  is 
published  separately  in  English  in  Mr  Ashley's  translation  above  referred  to. 

3  The  main  passages  are  Caesar,  B.  G.,  vi.  21-23,  and  Tacitus,  Germ.,  c.  26, 
upon  which  e.g.  our  English  authority  Stubbs  bases  his  remarks  in  Const. 
Hist.,  I.  c.  ii.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  de  Coulanges,  although  he  makes 
out  a  good  case  against  von  Maurer  on  some  points,  emphasises  unduly 
Ciesar's  words  cocjunt,  compel,  and  principes,  chiefs,  in  saying  they  mean 
"chiefs  arbitrarily  disposing  of  the  soil  of  which  alone  they  are  owners." 
But  in  their  natural  sense  the  words  merely  imply  that  the  people  fall  in 
with  the  arrangements  made  by  their  "chief  men,"  and  for  all  we  know, 
the  people  may  merely  have  deputed  certain  chief  men  to  carry  out  the 
customary  division  of  land  desired  by  the  community. 


52  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

was  the  assumption  upon  which  all  early  German  law  is 
based.  But  M.  de  Coulanges'  criticisms,  valuable  as  they 
are,  do  not  disprove  altogether  the  existence  of  some  form  of 
common  ownership  of  land  in  the  remoter  periods  of  Teutonic 
or  of  British  history  ;  for  the  proof  of  this  common  owner- 
ship lies  more  in  survivals  and  customs l  than  in  stray 
references  in  legal  documents.  And  Professor  Lamprecht, 
a  follower  of  von  Maurer,  was  quite  right  in  pointing  out  2 
that  nothing  depends  on  the  word  "  mark "  itself.  It 
matters  very  little  after  all  whether  we  find  the  word  in 
documents  or  not  ;  it  even  matters  very  little  whether  the 
mark  ever  existed  as  it  is  depicted  by  von  Maurer  or 
Stubbs.  The  fact  remains  that  there  are  extensive 
evidences  of  communal  ownership  (as  well  as  tenancy) 
in  English  manors,  and  these  evidences  point  back  to  a 
state  of  things  which  the  theory  of  private  property  in  land 
and  a  dependent  body  of  cultivators  in  the  earliest  times 
cannot  satisfactorily  explain. 

§  28.    Vinogradojfs  Evidence  on  the  Manorial  System. 

The  most  recent,  and  certainly  one  of  the  most  learned, 
investigators  of  this  difficult  question  has  concluded,  as 
the  result  of  his  researches,  that  "  the  communal  organisa- 
tion of  the  peasantry  is  more  ancient  and  more  deeply  laid 
than  the  manorial  order.  Even  the  feudal  period  shows 
everywhere  traces  of  a  peasant  class  living  and  working  in 
economically  self-dependent  communities  under  the  loose 
authority  of  a  lord,  whose  claims  may  proceed  from 
political  sources,  and  affect  the  semblance  of  ownership, 
but  do  not  give  rise  to  the  manorial  connection  between 
estate  and  village."  3  The  so-called  manorial  system  con- 
sists in  the  peculiar  connection  of  two  entirely  distinct 
agrarian  bodies  or  parties  4 — the  community  of  villagers 
cultivating  their  own  fields,  and  the  home-estate  (some- 
times loosely  called  the  demesne)  of  the  lord  "  tacked  on 
to  "  this  settlement.  This  expression  "  tacked  on  "  gives 
the  key  to  the  solution  of  the  question.  The  manorial 

1  As  shown  e.g.,  in  Gomme's  Village  Community. 

-  In  Le  Moyen  Age,  June  1889,  p.  131. 

3Vinogradoff,  Villeinage,  pp.  408,  409.  *  76.,  p.  404. 


THE  MANOR  AND  MANORIAL  SYSTEM     53 

system,  as  we  find  in  late  Saxon  and  Norman  times, 
contains  a  seigneurial  element  which  has  evidently  been 
superimposed  upon  an  originally  communal  element. 
Originally  there  was  an  independent  village  community 
(whether  living  exactly  according  to  the  "  mark "  system 
or  not  does  not  matter),  but  in  later  times  we  find  a 
dependent  community  working  for  a  home-farm,  which  is 
the  lord's.  How  did  the  independent  community  become 
subject  to  this  lord  ?  The  holders  of  the  older  "  mark  " 
theory  seem  to  have  supposed  that  the  subjection  was 
due  to  political  and  social  causes  gradually  enhancing  the 
power  of  some  local  man  of  note  or  authority.  "  The 
relation  of  dependence  on  a  lord  may  have  been  entered 
into  by  a  free  landowner  for  the  sake  of  honour  or  pro- 
tection "  ; l  and  there  are  abundant  evidences  of  this 
"  commendation "  of  weaker  men  to  those  who  were 
politically  and  socially  more  powerful 2 — though,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  practice  was  generally  the  result  of  the  police 
organisation,  not  of  the  land  system.3  "  The  man  who  had 
land  judged  the  man  who  had  not," 4  and  there  was  a 
constant  assimilation  going  on  between  the  really  servile 
dependents  of  a  lord  and  the  smaller  landowners.  But 
however  the  practice  of  commendation  arose,  it  undoubtedly 
had  great  effect  in  reducing  the  originally  free  status  of 
many  of  the  smaller  landowners.  At  the  same  time,  the 
main  features  of  the  manorial  subjection  to  a  lord  are 
probably  due  more  to  the  influence  of  conquest  than  to 
that  of  social  or  judicial  requirements,  though  these  latter 
cannot  be  neglected  or  minimised.  The  number  of  servile 
dependents  is  too  large  to  be  accounted  for  by  peaceful 
influences.  Moreover,  it  has  been  till  recently  overlooked 
that  in  many  cases  the  services  rendered  by  dependants 
were  rendered  not  to  a  lord  living  on  a  home  farm,  but  to 
one  living  at  some  considerable  distance.5  This  is  specially 

JStubbB,  Const.  Hist.,  vol.  I.  ch.  v.  p.  79;  cf.  also  p.  273. 
8  Especially  in  Domesday  ;  see  Ellis,  Introd.  to  Domesday,  i.  64-66. 
8  Stubbs,  ut  ante,  p.  79,  note,  and  p.  189. 

*  76.,  p.  189.     The  landless  man  was  compelled  to  choose  a  lord  for  his 
surety  and  protector,  ib.,  p.  153. 
5  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage,  p.  405. 


54  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  case  in  the  furnishing  of  provisions  for  the  lord's  table 
and  other  wants,  for  we  constantly  find  that  provisions  were 
sent  by  the  dependents  to  a  castle  a  long  way  off.  There 
is  also  the  matter  of  the  firma  unius  noctis,1  as  it  is 
called,  the  payment  of  "provisions  for  one  night"  made  to 
the  king's  household  by  a  borough  or  village,  which  seems 
to  point  to  a  community  "  standing  entirely  by  itself  and 
taxed  to  a  certain  tribute,  without  any  superior  land-estate 
necessarily  engrafted  upon  it."  Vinogradoff  thinks  this 
implies  an  over-lordship  exacting  tribute,  but  not  the  close 
manorial  relationships  which  we  see  under  a  later  system. 
Again,  the  fact  that  the  lord's  demesne  land  is  often  found 
in  strips,  mixed  up  with  the  strips  of  the  peasantry  (p.  82), 
seems  also  to  imply  a  time  when  the  tenants  or  subject 
class  did  not  collect  to  work  for  the  lord  upon  a  separate 
home  farm,  as  we  find  them  doing  later,  but  merely 
devoted  one  part  of  their  labour  upon  their  own  ground  in 
the  common  fields  to  the  use  and  payment  of  the  lord.2 
This  shows  an  intermediate  stage  between  the  tribute  paid 
by  a  practically  self-dependent  community  (as  in  the  case 
of  the  firma  unius  noctis)  and  the  services  rendered  when 
the  village  was  linked  more  closely  with  a  manorial  estate.3 
Once  again,  we  note  the  existence  of  a  special  class  of 
servants  4  "  who  collect  and  supervise  the  dues  and  services 
of  the  peasants  "  in  early  times,  but  who  are  not  to  be  found 
so  frequently  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries, 
when  the  number  of  "  home  farms  "  was  becoming  greater. 
Besides  these  special  servants  (radmen,  rodknights  or  riding- 
bailiffs),  we  also  note  that  in  many  cases  the  "  free  "  tenants 
or  socmen  (see  p.  75)  have  a  kind  of  supervision  over  the 
rest  while  they  are  doing  some  of  the  services  for  the  lord, 
and  their  position  indicates  that,  though  the  village  is 
already  set  to  work  for  the  lord,  it  manages  this  work  as 
much  as  possible  by  itself  as  a  self-dependent  community.5 

1  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage,  p.  405,  and  see  Pearson,  Hist,  of  Eng.,  vol. 
I.,  Appx.  D.    Thus  the  community  of  Badwen  in  Essex  rendered  a  pay- 
ment of  eight  nights,  Sahara  and  Fordham  in  Cambs.  gave  three  nights, 
and  many  other  instances  are  found  in  Domesday. 

2  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage,  p.  406.  3  Ib.,  p.  406. 
4  /ft.,  p.  407.  5  Ib.,  p.  407. 


THE  MANOR  AND  MANORIAL  SYSTEM     55 

§  29.  Evidence  from  Manorial  Courts  and'  Customs. 

All  this  seems  to  imply  the  subjection  of  originally  free 
communities  to  an  overlord,  a  subjection  that  proceeded 
first  by  reducing  them  to  a  more  or  less  loose  and  tribute- 
paying  relationship,  and  later  by  the  introduction  of  a 
resident  lord  on  a  home  farm  (the  demesne),  or  at  least  of 
a  home  farm  superintended  by  a  bailiff  representing  a  lord. 
The  internal  constitution  of  the  manor  gives  the  strongest 
evidence  for  this  original  freedom.  In  the  manorial  courts 
(p.  80)  the  tenants  were  the  jurors  and  suitors,  while  the 
lord  or  his  steward  was  not  the  judge,  but  merely  the 
recorder  of  their  decisions.  It  was  the  suitors  and  jurors, 
the  tenants  in  fact,  who  constituted  the  court  and  pro- 
nounced the  judgments.1  It  was  not  till  much  later, 
under  Norman  influence,  that  the  status  of  the  tenants  in 
their  own  courts  became  debased,  and  the  lord  or  his 
bailiff  was  regarded  as  the  judge.2 

Another  very  important  piece  of  evidence,  showing  that 
ceremonies,  which  have  been  erroneously  regarded  as  prov- 
ing the  original  servility  of  tenants  prove  in  reality  their 
original  freedom,  is  the  manorial  form  of  surrender  and 
admittance.  When  a  tenant  was  admitted  into  his  holding 
"  in  base  tenure,"  the  steward  handed  to  him  a  rod.  This 
was  till  lately  thought  to  symbolise  the  lord's  authority,  but 
Vinogradoff  shows  3  that,  on  the  contrary,  it  was  a  survival 
of  the  old  custom,  requiring  that  important  transactions 
should  be  performed  before  witnesses  and  a  middleman,  and 
that  the  steward  had  taken  the  place  of  the  middleman  and 
did  not  really  represent  the  lord  at  all.4  A  case  like  this 
shows  us  at  once  how  archaic  are  the  constitutions  and 
customs  of  the  village  community,  and  how  easily,  when 
these  customs  are  no  longer  understood,  they  may  be 
erroneously  construed  as  evidences  of  seigneurial  power. 

1  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage,  p.  370. 

2  It  may  be  added  that  the  village  as  a  body  frequently  acts  as  an  or- 
ganised community  in  disposing  of  rights  connected  with  the  soil.     Of.  the 
case  of  Brightwaltham,  Vinogradoff,  p.  359.  8  Villeinage,  pp.  372,  373. 

4  CJ,  Gomme,  Vitt.  Comm.,  p.  191,  who  quotes  a  similar  transference  of  a 
rod,  or  twig,  in  the  Malmesbury  village  community.  The  twig  here  (as 
in  the  other  cases  mentioned  by  Vinogradoff)  represents  the  land  itself, 
certainly  not  a  lord's  authority. 


56  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§  30.   The  "  Customary  "  Tenants. 

The  position  of  "  free  "  tenants  (p.  75)  in  the  later  manors 
is,  again,  a  matter  of  some  difficulty.  It  is  as  erroneous 
to  imagine  that  at  (say)  the  time  of  Domesday  there 
was  no  intermediate  grade  between  the  lord  and  his  serfs 
or  villeins,  as  it  is  to  hold  that  all  the  Saxons  and  those 
who  came  over  with  them  were  entirely  free.  In  Domes- 
day we  find  traces  of  a  large  number  of  tenants  of  various 
degrees  of  freedom,  and  it  is  these  traces,  together  with 
those  derived  from  the  legal  procedure  of  the  Norman 
period,  that  Vinogradoff  has  explained  with  masterly  insight. 
It  is  now  pretty  evident  that  the  classification  of  society 
into  villeins  and  freedholders  is  comparatively  late  and 
artificial,1  and  that  between  these  two  distinct  classes  there 
was  a  third  class,  and  a  very  large  one,  of  "  customary  "  2 
freeholders,  who  had  originally  formed  the  great  mass  of 
the  peasantry.3  The  Anglo-Saxon  world  was  ordered  and 
governed  by  custom  to  an  extent  quite  unappreciated  by 
the  Norman  lawyer  and  surveyor,  and  hardly  to  be  realised 
at  all  by  Englishmen  of  the  present  day.  But  this  "  cus- 
tomary "  life,  and  all  that  it  implied,  was  perfectly  well 
understood  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  village  who  lived 
under  it.  The  villagers  cared  nothing  for  abstract  legal 
definitions  of  tenure  and  status,  though  they  all  knew  the 
conditions  under  which  they  and  their  forefathers  held  their 
land.  But  the  Normans,  with  their  fixed  ideas  of  "  free  " 
and  "  unfree  "  tenancies,  tried  to  reduce  everyone  into  one 
of  these  two  sharply-defined  categories,4  and  hence  it  comes 
that  "  villeinage  "  must  not  be  taken  too  literally  as  a  clear 
definition  ot  a  tenant's  status  or  tenure,  but  we  must 
remember  that  it  was  really  "  a  complex  mould  into  which 
several  heterogeneous  elements  had  been  fused." 6  Hence 

1   Villeinage,  pp.  132,  177. 

"  The  word  custumarius  is  found  in  Rot.  Hundred.,  ii.  422,  507a. 

3  Vinogradoff,  p.  220. 

*  The  fact  that  free  men  in  Kent  and  on  the  Danish  manors  of  Essex 
were  all  classed  by  Domesday  as  villani  shows  what  mistakes  the  Normans 
made.  Vinogradoff,  p.  208. 

6  Vinogradoff,  p.  177 ;  cf.  also  "The  life  of  the  villein  is  chiefly  dependent  on 
custom,  which  is  the  great  characteristic  of  mediaeval  relations  and  which  stands 
in  sJiarp  contrast  with  slavery  on  the  one  hand  and  freedom  on  the  other." 


THE  MANOR  AND  MANORIAL  SYSTEM     57 

it  is  certain  that  many  men  who  in  Domesday  are  classed  as 
"  villeins  "  were  for  all  intents  and  purposes  "  free  "  men, 
who  either  merely  rendered  services,  not  always  necessarily 
servile,  as  a  condition  of  holding  land,  or  who,  in  addition 
to  holding  perfectly  free  land,  held  also  some  other  land 
in  villeinage,  and  thus  became  confused  altogether  with 
villeins.  There  is  little  doubt  that  the  free  holdings  in  the 
manors  represent,  in  many  cases,  free  shares  in  a  village 
community,  upon  which  the  manorial  structure  has  been 
superimposed.1 

§  31.  The  Evidence  of  Village  Communities, 

We  have,  therefore,  many  reasons  for  believing  that  the 
original  condition  of  the  subject  manorial  villages  had  been 
at  an  earlier  period  that  of  free  communities.  But  if  so,  can 
we  not  find  traces  of  such  communities  in  England  ?  Were 
they  all  extinct  at  the  time  of  Domesday  ?  Recent  writers 
certainly  incline  to  the  belief  that  individually  and  collec- 
tively villeins  were  more  free  in  Saxon  than  in  Norman 
times,2  but  it  has  been  stoutly  denied  3  that  there  are  any 
free  village  communities  to  be  found  later  than  the  Norman 
conquest,  or,  indeed,  previous  to  it.  Only  communities 
peopled  by  villeins  are  mentioned.  But  we  have  already 
seen  that  Domesday  is  an  unsatisfactory  guide  in  questions 
of  status,4  and  there  is  good  reason  to  doubt  whether  these 
villein  communities  were  quite  so  devoid  of  freedom  as 
the  Norman  surveyors  described  them.  In  the  cases  of 
Chippenham  and  Malmesbury,  at  least,  Mr  Gomme  6  gives 
very  remarkable  evidence  of  their  being  free  communities 
in  the  time  of  Domesday,  and  much  later  also,  and  the 
various  other  instances  which  he  quotes  in  his  valuable 
work  6  certainly  tend  to  prove  very  clearly,  by  their  relics 

1  Vinogradoff,  p.  353.  Cf.  Bracton,  De  Leg.,  ch.  xi.  /.  7  (i.  p.  53,  ed. 
Twiss).  Of  course  there  were  also  other  causes  of  free  tenements,  as — 
e.g.,  commutation,  but  this  is  one  cause  which  cannot  be  overlooked. 

8  Vinogradoff,  p.  135. 

3  Seebohm,  Village  Comm.,  p.  103;  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  i.  18,  and  in 
his  introd.  to  F.  de  Coulanges.  *  Vinogradoff,  p.  208. 

8  Village  Comm.,  pp.  173-200,  and  see  p.  195  specially  for  the  quotation 
from  Domesday. 

8  See  especially  ch.  vi.  on  "Tribal  Communities  in  Britain,"  ch.  vii. 


58  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

and  survivals,  that,  as  Vinogradoff  also  concludes  the  free 
village  community  existed  in  these  islands,  as  it  did  else- 
where, before  the  manorial  system  was  superimposed  or 
"tacked  on  to"  it. 

§  32.  A  Survey  of  the  Origin  of  the  Manor. 

Having  come  to  this  conclusion,  which  must  necessarily 
influence  any  view  which  we  take  of  the  manorial  system, 
we  may  now  venture  to  set  forth  a  comprehensive  though 
brief  survey  of  the  origin  of  the  village  community,  with 
its  seigneurial  and  communal  elements,  which  we  find  in 
historic  times.  This  I  do  with  considerable  diffidence — for 
I  am  well  aware  of  the  conflicting  theories  already  pro- 
pounded— but  a  review  of  the  facts,  placed  in  due  per- 
spective and  exhibiting  an  orderly  development,  may  have 
its  advantages.  To  begin  with,  we  see,  on  looking  back 
into  the  mists  of  prehistoric  antiquity,  that  a  large *  non- 
Aryan  population  existed  in  these  islands  in  the  Neolithic 
stage  of  culture.  They  had  already  made  some  small 
advances  in  agriculture,  and  had  passed,2  or  were  rapidly 
passing,  from  the  tribal 3  to  the  village  community — a 
transition 4  which  is  natural  as  the  development  of  agri- 
culture necessitates  a  closer  connection  with  the  soil  than 
the  more  or  less  unsettled  tribal  stage  allows.  Upon  the 
state  of  society  thus  formed,  or  forming,  descended  succes- 
sive waves  of  Aryan  invaders  in  the  shape  of  the  Celtic 
immigrants  to  Britain.  At  first,  no  doubt,  the  Aryan 
tribes,  with  the  pride  so  characteristic  of  the  earlier  Aryan 
races,  took  but  little  part  in  the  cultivation  of  the  land, 
but  preferred  to  leave  it  to  the  conquered  and  subject 
Iberians,  exercising  only  a  loose  overlordship  over  the  more 
remote  village  communities.6  (This  accounts  for  the  sur- 
vival, centuries  later,  of  the  customs  already  mentioned,  that 

Transitional  types  of  the  village  community  in  Britain,  ch.  viii.  The  Final 
type ;  also  ch.  iii.  Methods  of  dealing  with  British  evidence. 

1  Boyd  Dawkins,  Early  Man,  pp.  290,  306.        2  Elton,  Origin*,  p.  145. 

3  Boyd  Dawkins,  Early  Man,  p.  272. 

4  Cf.  the  similar  transition  from  tribe  to  village  in  India ;   Tupper, 
Punjab  Customary  Law,  ii.  p.  28.     The  tribal  community  persisted  longer 
in  Wales;  cf.  Gomme,  V.  C.,  p.  63. 

6Gomme,  V.  C.,  p.  71. 


THE  MANOR  AND  MANORIAL  SYSTEM     59 

suggest,  even  in  the  later  manors,  a  much  looser  tie  between 
lord  and  dependants  than  afterwards  existed.)  But  as 
time  went  on  we  know  that  the  Celtic  invaders,  especially 
the  most  recent  of  them  (p.  13),  themselves  made  very 
considerable  progress  in  agriculture,  and  thus  the  agrarian 
bond  between  the  subject  and  the  conquering  races  became 
closer  and  closer.  Then  came  the  Roman  occupation,  but 
we  have  already  seen  that,  after  making  full  allowance  for 
the  undoubted  extent  of  Roman  influence  in  other  direc- 
tions, its  effect  upon  the  village  community  and  its  agricul- 
ture can  only  have  been  on  a  level  with  our  own  influence 
upon  the  villages  of  India.  When  the  Romans  took  away 
their  military  and  administrative  forces,  the  Celtic  and  non- 
Aryan  communities  remained  much  as  they  had  been  before 
the  Romans  came.1  The  Roman  did  not  enter  into  the 
life  of  the  village  community  as  did  Celt  or  Saxon.  He 
was  above  it  and  not  of  it.  But  when  the  Saxons  came, 
their  influence  was  felt  at  once.  Terrible  as  they  were  in 
their  destruction  of  the  upper  classes,  especially  those  of 
the  towns,  they  did  not  seek  to  destroy  the  peasantry  of 
the  rural  districts,2  any  more  than  the  successive  conquerors 
of  India  (who  could  be  to  the  full  as  cruel  as  the  Saxons 
ever  were)  have  obliterated  the  villagers  of  the  Punjab.3 
On  the  contrary,  their  own  agrarian  development  (p.  39) 
was  much  the  same  as  that  of  the  land  they  invaded.  The 
village  community  received,  therefore,  certainly  no  check 
from  this  fresh  invasion.  What  happened  was  that  the 
Celt  and  Iberian  were  debased  in  status  in  some  cases, 
where  the  conquerors  made  their  first  settlements,  but  were 
left  in  the  remoter  parts  of  the  country  pretty  much  as 
before,  though  with  a  continual  tendency  to  fresh  debase- 
ment as  time  went  on  and  the  conquest  proceeded.  They 
helped  to  form  the  large  and  mixed  class  of  servile  de- 
pendants whom  we  find  later.  The  Saxons  themselves 
brought  slaves  and  dependants  with  them,  for  it  is  absurd 
to  suppose  them  all  free  and  equal.*  And  no  doubt  the 

1  Cf.  Qomme,  V.  <7.,  pp.  60,  63.     a  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xxxriii. 
J  Lord  Metcalfe,  quoted  by  Gomme,  V.  G. ,  p.  60. 

4  There  were  almost  certainly  larger  and  smaller  private  estates  ;  Stubbs, 
Const.  Hist.,  vol.  I.  ch.  v.  pp.  52,  73.     For  slaves,  cj.  p.  78. 


60  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

leaders  and  their  chief  followers  occupied  from  the  first 
period  of  the  invasion  a  high  position  in  the  social  and 
economic  scale.1  But  there  were  also  large  numbers  of 
free  Saxon  soldiers2  who  settled  down  on  the  land  which 
they  and  their  chiefs  had  taken,  and  it  is  to  this  class — 
and  to  the  Danes  who  came  later — that  we  owe  the 
numerous  "  free  tenants  "  of  the  later  manor.  It  is  pretty 
evident  also  that  the  amount  of  freedom  was  greater  in 
Saxon  times  than  in  Norman,3  and  consequently  greater  in 
the  earlier  portion  of  the  Saxon  period  than  in  the  later. 
Much  also  was  left  to  custom  and  tradition  in  the  relations 
of  lord  and  dependant.  Then  finally  came  the  Norman 
conquest,  with  its  stricter  feudalism,  its  inelastic  ideas  of 
status  and  tenure,  and  its  great  work  of  firm  organisation 
and  consolidation.  The  tie  between  the  lord  and  his 
dependants  had  been  growing  closer,  more  personal,  and,  if 
we  may  say  so,  more  "residentiary,"  all  through  the  Saxon 
period,  and  the  Norman  conquest  accentuated  this  develop- 
ment, raising  the  lord,  debasing  the  dependant,  and  fusing 
into  one  the  numerous  varying  grades  of  villeinage.  And 
so  we  arrive  at  last  at  the  manor  of  historic  times,  with  all 
those  various  influences  and  survivals  within  it  that  were 
the  heritage  of  Iberian,  Celt,  and  Saxon,  but  which  history 
could  not  record. 

§  33.    The  Feudal  System. 

In  the  next  period  we  shall  find  this  manorial  system 
consolidated  and  organised  under  the  Norman  rule,  and 
may  therefore  defer  a  detailed  description  of  a  typical 
manor  till  then.  Here  we  may  add,  however,  that  the 
manor,  especially  in  its  social,  judicial,  political,  and  non- 
economic  relations,  is  closely  connected  with  the  feudal 
system.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  feudalism,  and 
all  that  it  implied,  had  already  begun  in  England  some 
considerable  time  before  the  Norman  conquest ;  and  as  the 
manor  afforded  a  convenient  unit,  political  as  well  as  social, 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  Vol.  I.  pp.  73,  55,  149. 

2  The  division  of  the  land  among  the  conquering  host  is  seen  in  Stubbs, 
id  ante,  pp.  71,  72.  *  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage,  p.  135. 


THE  MANOR  AND  MANORIAL  SYSTEM    61 

for  the  estimation  of  feudal  duties  and  services,  the  lord 
of  the  manor  tended  to  become  more  and  more  a  feudal 
chief.  In  the  primitive  Saxon  constitution  the  political 
unit  had  been  the  free  man,  but  later,  as  land  passed 
from  being  public  to  private  property,  the  sign  of  freedom 
became  the  possession  of  land.  The  landless  man  had  to 
select  a  lord,  and  the  "  land  becomes  the  sacramental  tie  of 
all  public  relations." l  The  lords  of  the  manors  became 
nominally  the  protectors,  but  really  the  masters,  of  the  free- 
men around  them,  who  were  poor,  and  only  had  a  small 
piece  of  land.  The  practice  of  commendation  2  for  judicial 
or  defensive  purposes,  and  the  granting  of  judicial  powers  8 
to  the  larger  landowners,  all  tended  in  the  same  direction, 
while  the  frequent  incursions  of  the  Danes  probably  threw 
the  smaller  free  tenants  still  more  under  the  influence  of 
the  greater  local  landowners,  who  would  offer  them  their 
protection  in  return  for  manorial  services.  When,  there- 
fore, William  the  Norman  conquered  England,  he  did  not, 
as  is  still  often  supposed,  impose  a  feudal  system  upon  the 
people.  The  system  was  there  already,  developed  from  the 
manors,  and  the  Norman  kings  only  organised  and  crystallised 
it  still  further.4 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  vii.  p.  167. 

2  Stubbs,  i.  79,  and  the  valuable  note  there  relating  to  the  practice  in 
Domesday. 

3  E.g.,  sac  and  HOC  (Stubbs,  i.  184). 

4  Of.  Pearson,  Hist.  ofEng.,  i.  283,  284. 


PERIOD  II 

FROM  THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST  TO  THE  REIGN 
OF  HENRY  III. 

(1066-1216  A.D.) 


PHYSICAL    ASPECT 

ENGLAND 

SAXON  &  NORMAN  TIMES. 

Only  ih&IO  Chief  Towns  are'ins0rl& 


lowlands 

mis ._ 

forests 

Marshes 


NO&TH 
SEA 


Scale  of  English  Mile« 

O      1O     £0    3O    -K)    8O  75  1OO 


NOTE. — For  the  features  here  noted  compare  the  remarks  on  pages  17.  69  and  107. 


CHAPTER  V 

DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS 

§  34.  The  Survey  ordered  by  William  I. 

IT  was  very  natural  that  when  William  the  Norman  had 
conquered  England  he  should  wish  to  ascertain  the  capa- 
bilities of  his  kingdom,  both  in  regard  to  military  defence 
and  for  purposes  of  taxation,  and  that  he  should  endeavour 
to  gain  a  comprehensive  idea  of  the  results  of  his  conquest. 
He  therefore  ordered  a  grand  survey  of  the  kingdom  to  be 
made,  and  sent  commissioners  into  each  district  to  make  it. 
These  officials  were  bidden  to  make  a  long  list  of  enquiries 
about  all  the  estates  in  the  realm,  including  the  following 
points : — The  name  of  each  manor ;  who  held  it  in  the 
time  of  King  Edward  the  Confessor ;  how  many  "  hides  " 
there  were  in  the  manor,1  or,  in  other  words,  the  rateable 
value  of  the  estate ;  how  many  ploughs  there  were  on  the 
estate,  whether  belonging  to  the  lord  or  the  villeins ;  how 
many  villeins,  homagers,  cottars,  or  slaves  there  were ;  how 
many  free  tenants  and  tenants  in  socage  (socmeri) ;  how 
much  wood,  meadow,  and  pasture ;  and  the  number  of 
mills  and  fish  ponds.  They  were  further  to  enquire  what 
had  been  added  to  or  taken  away  from  the  estate — that  is, 
the  depreciations  and  improvements  ;  the  gross  value  in  the 
time  of  King  Edward  (T.K.E.),  the  present  value  in  the 
time  of  King  William  (T.R.W.) ;  how  much  each  free  man 
or  socman  had,  and  whether  any  advance  could  be  made  in 
the  value.  The  results  of  this  great  survey,  taken  separately 
in  counties,  were  then  sent  to  Winchester,  then  the  capital 
city,  and  there  methodised,  enrolled,  and  codified  as  we  now 

1  It  is  almost  impossible  to  fix  the  value  of  the  hide  as  a  measurement. 
It  was  never  expressly  determined,  nor  is  it  so  fixed  in  Domesday  ;  Ellis, 
Introd.,  i.  145  sqq.  ;  Birch,  Domesday,  229.  Cunningham  (i.  120)  puts  it 
at  60  to  80  modern  acres  under  crop,  or  an  area  of  120,  including  land 
fallow,  under  the  then  system  of  agriculture. 

J£  <>* 


66  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

see  them.1  The  inquisition  was  probably  commenced  in  the 
year  1085,  and  completed  in  the  year  following.  It  con- 
tains the  earliest  and  most  reliable  statistics  for  English  in- 
dustrial history,  and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  no  adequate 
general  table  or  analysis  of  this  great  work  has  yet  been 
made  by  a  competent  economic  authority,  or  that  historians 
do  not  use  it  more  copiously  for  gaining  a  knowledge  of  the 
social  and  economic  conditions  of  the  time.  For  this  latter 
purpose  it  is  absolutely  unrivalled. 

§  35.   The  Population  given  by  Domesday. 

Before  presenting  a  few  main  features  gathered  from  the 
large  mass  of  facts  thus  recorded,  it  may  be  well  to  remark 
that  of  the  40  counties  into  which  England  is  now  divided, 
six  are  not  included  in  the  survey.  Those  omitted  are 
Monmouth,  Northumberland,  Cumberland,  Westmoreland, 
Durham,  and  Lancashire.  But  of  these  Lancashire  had  not 
yet  been  made  a  separate  county,  and  part  of  it  therefore 
appears  in  the  survey  of  Yorkshire  and  Cheshire.  Mon- 
moutb  was  at  that  time  entirely  Welsh,  and  the  other 
counties — those  in  the  North — were  still  desolate  and  wasted 
by  the  ruthless  severity  of  William's  well-known  devastation 
(1069-70  A.D.).  After  his  march  from  the  Humber  to  the 
Tyne,  not  one  inhabited  village  was  to  be  seen  on  the 
road  between  York  and  Durham,  and  many  of  those  whom 
the  sword  had  spared  died  of  starvation  in  the  nine  years' 
famine  which  followed  this  dreadful  punishment.2  The 
more  westerly  parts  of  the  North  were  hardly  yet  con- 
quered at  the  time  of  the  survey.  The  statistics  of  the 
other  34  counties  are,  however,  pretty  full ;  and  from 
them  we  gather  that  the  total  population  must  have  been, 
in  round  numbers,  rather  under  two  million  persons.  The 
population  actually  given3  is  283,242,  but  this  only 
includes  the  able-bodied  men,  and  it  should  be  multiplied 
by  five  to  give  the  general  total  of  actual  inhabitants. 
This  multiplication  gives  about  1,400,000,  and  allowing 

1  Birch,  Domesday,  p.  25  ;  Ellis,  i.  153. 

2  Pearson,  Hist,  of  Eng.,  i.  361,  and  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  iv.  292, 
v.  42. 

3  See  Ellis,  Introduction  to  Domesday,  Vol.  II.  p.  514. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS     67 


for  omissions  or  careless  enumeration  (as  e.g.  in  Yorkshire1), 
we  may  say  not  much  more  than  1,800,000  for  the  whole 
land.  Small  as  this  number  may  seem,  it  was  not  greatly 
increased  for  several  centuries.2 

The  population  of  the  different  counties  is  interesting, 
and  is  exhibited  in  the  following  tables,  first  in  order  of 
actual  numbers,  and  secondly  in  order  of  density  propor- 
tionate to  the  area  of  each  county.  It  will  be  noticed  at 
once  that  the  eastern  and  southern  counties  were  the  most 
populous  at  that  time,  as  was  to  be  expected  in  a  period 
when  the  number  of  the  population  depended,  much  more 
closely  than  it  does  now,  upon  the  yield  of  agricultural 
produce  and  the  development  of  agriculture  generally. 

J.  TABLE  OF  ACTUAL  POPULATION  INDIFFERENT  COUNTIES, 
as  given  in  Domesday. 


COUNTY. 

Popula- 
tion. * 

COUNTY. 

Popula- 
tion.* 

1  Norfolk      - 

27,087 

18  Berks 

6,324 

2  Lincoln 

25,305 

19  Notts 

5,686 

3  Suffolk       - 

20,491 

20  Cornwall    - 

5,438 

4  Devon 

17,434 

21  Bucks 

5,420 

5  Essex 

16,060 

22  Hereford    - 

5,368 

6  Somerset   - 

13,764 

23  Cambridge 

5,204 

7  Kent 

12,205 

24  Shropshire 

5,080 

8  Sussex 

10,410 

25  Herts 

4,927 

9  Wilts 

10,150 

26  Worcester  - 

4,625 

10  Hampshire 

9,032 

27  Surrey 

4,383 

1  1  Northamps 

8,441 

28  Bedford 

3,875 

12  Gloucester 

8,366 

29  Staffordshire 

3,178 

13  Yorks 

8,055 

30  Derbyshire 

3,041 

1  4  Dorset 

7,807 

31  Huntingdonshire 

2,914 

15  Oxford       - 

6,775 

32  Cheshire     - 

2,349 

16  Leicestershire 

6,772 

33  Middlesex  - 

2,302 

17  Warwick   - 

6,574 

34  Rutland    - 

862 

*  It  must  be  remembered  the  figures  represent  only  able-bodied  males. 


1  See  Domesday,  f.  302  A,  about  the  manors  "ad  Prestune" — "sixteen 
are  cultivated  by  a  few  men,  but  how  many  men  there  are  is  not  known." 
a  Pearson,  Ifist.  of  England,  i.  377. 


68 


INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 


II.  TABLE  OF  COUNTIES  according  to  Proportionate  Density 
of  Population. 


COUNTY. 

Acres  per 
person.  * 

COUNTY. 

Acres  per 
person.* 

1  Suffolk       - 

46 

18  Warwick   - 

87 

2  Norfolk      - 

50 

19  Sussex 

89 

3  Essex 

61 

20  Notts 

92 

4  Middlesex  - 

66 

21  Gloucester 

93 

5  Lincoln 

69 

22  Devon 

94 

6  Oxfordshire 

71 

23  Hereford   - 

99 

7  Northamps 
8  Leicester    - 

74 
75 

24  Cambs 
25  Worcestershire   - 

100 
102 

9  Berkshire  - 
10  Somerset    - 

76 

76 

26  Surrey 
27  Rutland     - 

105 
110 

11  Bedfordshire 

76 

28  Cornwall    - 

158 

12  Hunts 
13  Kent 

78 
79 

29  Shropshire 
30  Staffs. 

166 
204 

14  Dorset 
15  Herts 

81 

82 

31  Derby 
32  Cheshire 

216 

279 

16  Wilts 

85 

33  Yorks 

497 

17  Bucks 

86 

34  Hants 

1011 

*  Fractions  omitted. 

It  is  in  some  respects,  perhaps,  rather  remarkable  that  the 
first  three  most  populous  counties  are  Suffolk,  Norfolk,  and 
Essex ;  but  this  seems  to  have  been  due  to  the  wool  (and 
other)  trade  with  Flanders  and  the  Continent,  for  it  must 
be  remembered  that  at  that  time  the  eastern  counties'  ports 
were  much  frequented.  Next  to  these  in  population  come 
the  Southern  and  Midland  counties. 

§  36.   The  Wealth  of  various  Districts. 

The  distribution  of  wealth  among  the  various  counties 
is  also  interesting,  as  may  be  seen  from  the  following  table 
of  the  twenty-one  leading  counties  of  that  time,  with  the 
approximate  value  of  the  rents  paid  by  the  manors  therein, 
deduced  from  Domesday.1  Here  the  Eastern  and  Southern 

1  This  table  is  compiled  from  data  given  (for  another  purpose)  by  Pear- 
eon,  Hist,  of  Eng.,  Vol.  I.,  Appx.  D.  Though  necessarily  only  approxi- 
mate, it  still  seems  fairly  reliable. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS    69 


counties  rank  highest,  Kent  coming  first,  then  Essex,  Norfolk, 
and  Sussex,  while  Oxford  takes  rather  a  higher  place,  and 
Middlesex  (excluding  London)  a  low  one.  The  table  is  as 
follows  : — 


Order. 

COUNTY. 

Approx.  Rental. 

£         8.      d. 

1 

Kent      - 

5717     6     7 

2 

Essex 

4784  16     8 

3 

Norfolk  - 

4514  11     7 

4 

Sussex     - 

3436  12     0 

5 

Oxford    - 

3242     2   11 

6 

Devon 

3220   14     3 

7 

Gloucester 

2827     6     8 

8 

Dorset    - 

2656     9     8 

9 

Berks 

2460  16     1 

10 
11 

Northamps 
Bucks 

1843     0     7 
1813     7     9 

12 

Herts      - 

1541   13  11 

13 
14 

Surrey    - 
Warwick 

1524     4     9 
1359   13     8 

15 
16 

Bedford  - 
Worcester 

1096   12     2 
991     0     6 

17 
18 

Hunts 
Middlesex 

864   15     4 
754     7      8 

19 

Leicester 

736     3     0 

20 

Cornwall 

6C2     1     4 

21 

Derby 

461     4     0 

Generally  speaking,  then,  we  may  say  that  the  east  and 
south  of  England  contained  the  richest,  best  tilled,  and 
most  populous  parts  of  the  country.  Their  downs  and 
wolds  afforded  good  pasturage  for  sheep  and  cattle,  while 
the  woods  in  every  district  formed  excellent  fattening 
grounds  for  swine,  of  which  large  numbers  were  kept.  The 
hollows  at  the  foot  of  the  downs  in  the  south  and  west,  the 
river  flats  of  the  eastern  counties,  and  the  low  gravel  hills 
in  other  parts  contained  the  best  and  easiest  land  to  work. 
The  chief  towns1  were  London,  Bristol,  Norwich,  Lincoln, 

1  Curiously  enough,  London,  Bristol,  and  Winchester  do  not  appear 
separately  in  the  survey,  but  are  only  mentioned  casually.  For  other 
important  towns,  cf.  p.  89. 


70  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

Oxford,  York,  Exeter,  and  Winchester ;  and  Dover  was 
also  a  place  of  considerable  importance.  But  they  were 
almost  insignificant  if  we  compare  them  with  their  modern 
dimensions.  York  had  only  some  1600  houses;1  Norwich 
boasted  not  more  than  1320  burgesses;  and  it  has  been 
estimated  that,  generally  speaking,  from  7000  to  10,000 
people  in  all  was  "  the  population  of  a  first  class  town."2  They 
were,  in  fact,  trading  centres  rather  than  seats  of  manufactur- 
ing industry.  Although  comparatively  unimportant  at  the 
time  of  Domesday,  they  began  to  increase  very  much  in  pros- 
perity soon  afterwards.  There  are  9250  manors  enumerated 
in  Domesday,  and  all  except  the  towns  above  mentioned  were 
practically  what  we  should  now  call  villages  of  no  great  size. 

§  37.  The  Manors  and  Lords  of  the  Manors. 
Of  course  each  of  these  manors,  after  the  Norman  Conquest, 
was  held  by  a  "  lord,"  who  in  turn  held  it  more  or  less  re- 
motely from  the  King.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  distinguishing 
feature  of  the  Conquest,  that  William  the  Norman  made  him- 
self the  supreme  landowner  of  the  country,  so  that  all  land 
was  held  under  him.3  He  himself  also,  as  a  private  land- 
owner, held  a  large  number  of  manors,  which  were  farmed 
by  his  bailiffs,  and  for  each  of  these  manors  he  was  there- 
fore in  a  double  sense  the  lord.  But  the  majority  of 
the  manors  in  the  country  were  held  by  his  followers,  the 
Norman  nobles,  and  nearly  all  of  them  had  several  manors 
each.  Now  it  was  impossible  for  a  noble  to  look  after  all 
his  manors  himself,  even  if  he  had  wished  it,  since  by 
William's  cautious  policy  their  lands  had  been  assigned  to 
them  in  various  widely  separated  districts,4  and  some  of 
them,  again,  had  so  many  manors  that  personal  supervision 
was  impossible.5  Nor  was  it  always  advisable  to  leave  them 
merely  to  the  care  of  bailiffs,  and,  therefore,  naturally  the 
great  landowners  used  to  sub-let  some  of  their  manors  to 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  166. 
-  Pearson,  Hist,  of  Eng.,  i.  381. 

3  Taswell-Langmead,  Const.  Hist.,  ch.  ii.  p.  49;  Stubbs,  I.  ch.  ix.  p.  274. 

4  Stubbs,  i.  p.  272. 

5  Robert  of  Mortain  held  the  largest  number — viz. ,  793 ;  but  Odo  of 
Bayeux  had  439,  and  Alan  of  Brittany  442.     The  ancient  demesne  of  the 
Crown  consisted  of  1422.     Ellis,  i.  225,  226. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS     71 

other  tenants — often  to  Englishmen  who  had  submitted  to 
the  Norman  Conquest.  The  nobles  who  held  their  land 
direct  from  the  King  were  called  tenants-in-chief,  and 
those  to  whom  they  sub-let  it  were  called  tenants-in- 
TTvesne.  But  when  a  noble  let  a  manor  to  a  tenant-in- 
mesne,  this  tenant  then  for  all  practical  purposes  took  his 
place,  and  became  the  "  lord  "  of  that  manor.  Thus,  then, 
we  find  various  kinds  of  manors — some  owned  directly  by 
the  King,  others  by  the  great  nobles,  and  others  again  held 
by  tenants-in-mesne.  For  instance,  in  the  Domesday  of 
Oxfordshire,1  we  find  that  one  Milo  Crispin,  a  tenant-in- 
chief,  held  a  large  number  of  manors  from  the  King,  but 
also  let  many  to  sub-tenants,  that  of  Cuxham,  e.g.,  being 
let  to  Alured,  who  was  therefore  its  lord.  So,  too,  in  War- 
wickshire, the  manor  of  Estone  (now  Aston)  was  one  of 
those  belonging  to  William  Fitz-Ansculf,  but  he  had  let  it 
to  Godmund,  an  Englishman,  who  was  therefore  "  lord  of 
the  manor  of  Estone."  In  many  cases  the  lordship  of  a 
manor  was  vested  to  a  monastery  or  abbey;  in  fact,  it  is 
said  that  the  Church  held  rather  more  than  one- fifth  of 
the  whole  land  of  the  kingdom.2 

§  38.   The  Inhabitants  of  the  Manor. 

The  lord  of  the  manor  was  a  person  of  great  importance, 
but  of  very  varying  social  position.  The  great  nobles,  such 
as  Odo  of  Bayeux,  whose  rent  roll  was  well  over  £3000 
a  year  (an  enormous  sum  for  those  days),  or  Robert  of 
Mortain,  who  numbered  his  manors  not  by  the  score  but 
by  the  hundred,  held,  of  course,  a  rank  equal  to  the  noblest 
and  richest  of  the  Dukes  of  the  present  day.  But  there 
was  a  large  number  of  lesser  nobles,  whose  income  varied 
from  £300  to  £500  a  year,  and  also  many  county  gentle- 
men, as  we  should  call  them,  who,  though  tenants-in-chief 
and  lords  of  manors,  had  a  comparatively  small  income.3 

1  See  the  survey  for  Oxfordshire  in  any  reprint. 

3  Pearson  reckons  :  the  Crown  held  t,  the  Church  A,  and  the  barons  the 
remaining  i  ;  Hist.  ofEng.,  i.  383. 

"  Five  to  twenty  pounds  a  year  was  no  uncommon  income  for  a  gentle- 
man" (Pearson,  Hint,  of  Eng.,  i.  384),  but  this  must  be  multiplied  by  20 
at  least  to  give  any  idea  of  its  value  in  modern  figures. 


72  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

Besides  the  lord  himself  (whether  King,  noble,  or  sub- 
tenant), with  his  personal  retainers,  and  generally  a  parish 
priest  or  some  monks,  there  were  three  distinct  classes  of 
inhabitants — (1)  First  came  the  villani  or  villeins,  who 
formed  about  38  per  cent1  of  the  total  population  recorded 
in  Domesday,  and  were  by  far  the  most  numerous  and 
widely-spread  class.2  Their  holdings  differed  in  size,  but  on 
the  average  we  may  take  them  as  occupying  a  virgate  or 
yardland,  which  is  equivalent  to  some  30  acres  of  arable 
land,  and,  of  course,  their  holdings  were  scattered  in  plots 
among  the  common  fields  of  the  manor.  The  villeins  also 
had  a  house  in  the  village,  and  were  often  called  virgarii 
or  yardlings,  from  holding  a  virgate  of  land.  (2)  Next  to 
the  villeins  came  the  cottars,  or  bordars,3  a  class  distinct 
from  and  below  the  former,  who  probably  held  only  some 
5  or  10  acres  of  land  and  a  cottage,  and  did  not  even 
possess  a  plough,  much  less  a  team  of  oxen  apiece,  but  had 
to  combine  among  themselves  for  the  purpose  of  ploughing. 
They  form  32  per  cent,  of  the  Domesday  population. 
Finally  came  (3)  the  slaves,  who  were  much  fewer  in 
numbers  than  is  commonly  supposed,  forming  only  9  per 
cent,  of  the  Domesday  population.4  Less  than  a  century 
after  the  Conquest  these  disappear,  and  merge  into  the 
cottars.  They  should  not  be  confused  with  either  villeins 
or  bordars,  but  Ellis  is  probably  right  in  supposing  that 
the  servi  correspond  to  the  Saxon  theow  or  esne,  while  the 
villeins  correspond  to  the  ceorls  or  churls,  and  that  under 
the  Norman  system  there  was  a  continual  approximation 
going  on  between  them,  the  churls  becoming  degraded,  and 
the  position  of  the  theows  being  improved,  so  that  both 
were  brought  nearer  together  in  the  social  scale.5 

1  The  percentages  are  given  by  Seebohm,  Village  Community,  p.  86. 

2  Ellis  tabulates  108,407  (Domesday,  ii.  511). 

3  See  Ellis,  Domesday,  ii.  511,  and  Birch,  Domesday,  pp.  141  and  154; 
also  Ashley,  Economic  History,  I.  i.  p.  18.    Ellis  tabulates  82,119  bordars, 
1749  "  coseets,"  and  5054  cotarii.    The  terms  coseet,  cotsedae,  coscez,  cozets, 
coteri,  cotmanni,  cotarii  seem  to  be  used  more  or  less  of  the  same  class. 
The  exact  status  of  the  bordar  and  cottar  has  been  the  subject  of  much 
discussion,  but  probably  the  real  distinction  between  them  was  very  slight. 

4  In  Ellis  (ii.  511),  25,156  servi. 

5  Of.  Birch,  Domesday,  p.  170 ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  xi.  p.  428. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS  73 

§  39.  The  Condition  of  these  Inhabitants. 

The  chief  feature  of  the  social  condition  of  these  classes 
of  people  was  that  they  were  subject  to  a  lord.  They  each 
depended  upon  a  superior,  and  no  man  could  be  either 
lordless  or  landless,  for  all  persons  in  villeinage,  which  in- 
cluded every  one  below  the  lord  of  the  manor,  were  subject 
to  a  master,  and  bound  to  the  land,  except,  of  course,  "  free 
tenants  "  (p.  75).  But  even  against  their  lord  the  villeins 
had  certain  rights  which  were  to  be  recognised ;  *  and  they 
had,  besides,  many  comforts  and  little  responsibility,  except 
to  pay  their  dues  to  their  lord.  Moreover,  it  was  possible  for 
a  villein  to  purchase  a  remission  of  his  services,  and  become 
a  "  free  tenant ; "  or  he  might  become  such  by  residing  in 
a  town  for  a  year  and  a  day,  and  being  a  member  of  a 
town  gild,  as  long  as  during  that  period  he  was  unclaimed 
by  his  lord.2  And  in  course  of  time  the  villein's  position 
came  to  be  this — he  owed  his  lord  the  customary  services 
(p.  75)  whereby  his  lord's  land  was  cultivated;  but  his 
lord  could  not  refuse  him  his  customary  rights  in  return — 
"  his  house  and  lands,  and  rights  of  wood  and  hay  "  3 — and 
in  relation  to  every  one  but  his  lord  he  was  a  perfectly 
free  citizen.  His  condition  tended  to  improve  4  (at  least  in 
an  economic  sense),  and  by  the  time  of  the  Great  Plague 
(1348)  a  large  number  of  villeins  had  become  actually 
free,  having  commuted  their  services  for  money-payments.5 
What  these  services  were  we  shall  now  explain.  But, 
finally,  it  should  be  pointed  out  that  the  state  of  villeinage 
and  of  serfage  was  practically  the  same  thing  in  two  aspects  ; 
the  first  implying  the  fact  that  the  villein  was  bound  to  the 
soil,  the  second  that  he  was  subject  to  the  master.  A  serf 

1  Vinogradoff,  V.  in  E.,  pp.  174,  176.     The  lord  could  even  be  fined  for 
not  fulfilling  his  village  duties.     Gorame,  Vill.  Comm.,  p.  117. 
a  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  xi.  p.  421. 

3  Stubbs,  II.  xvi.  p.  463. 

4  Seebohm  in  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  July  1892,  vol.  vii.  27,  p.  457,  who 
agrees  with  Thorold  Rogers.     Dr  Stubbs  and  others  hold  a  quite  contrary 
view  (Const.  Hist.,  i.  p.  427),  but  this  is  because  they  take  into  account 
only  the  legal  status,  not  the  economic  condition  of  the  villein. 

6  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  253.  The  process  of  commutation  had 
probably  begun  before  the  Conquest.  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  i. 
p.  22. 


74  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

was  not  a  slave ;    and,   as  we  saw  above,  slaves  became 
extinct  soon  after  the  Norman  Conquest. 

§  40.  Services  due  to  the  Lord  from  his  Tenants  in  Villeinage. 

Under  the  manorial  system  rent  was  paid  in  a  very 
different  manner  from  that  in  which  it  is  paid  to-day,  for 
it  was  a  rent  not  so  much  of  money,  though  that  was 
employed,  as  of  services.  The  services  thus  rendered  by 
tenants  in  villeinage,  whether  villeins  or  cottars,  may  be 
divided,  although  they  present  much  variety,  into  week- 
work,1  and  boon-days  or  work  on  special  days.2  The  week- 
work  consisted  of  ploughing  or  reaping,  or  doing  some 
other  agricultural  work  for  the  lord  of  the  manor  for  two 
or  three  days  in  the  week,  or  at  fixed  times,  such  as  at 
harvest ;  while  boon-day  work  was  rendered  at  times  not 
fixed,  but  whenever  the  lord  of  the  manor  might  require  it, 
though  the  number  of  boon-days  in  a  year  was  limited.3 
When,  however,  the  villein  or  cottar  had  performed  these 
liabilities,  he  was  quite  free  to  do  work  on  his  own  land, 
or,  for  that  matter,  on  anyone  else's  land,  as  indeed  the 
cottars  frequently  did,  for  they  had  not  much  land  of  their 
own,  and,  therefore,  often  had  time  and  labour  to  spare. 
It  was  from  this  cottar  class  with  time  to  spare  that  a 
distinct  wage-earning  class,4  like  our  modern  labourers, 
arose,  who  lived  almost  entirely  by  wages.  We  shall  hear 
more  of  them  later  on,  but  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest 
not  many  such  existed. 

§  41.  Money  Payments  and  Rents. 

It  was  also  usual  for  a  tenant,  besides  rendering  these 
servile  services,  to  pay  his  lord  a  small  rent  either  in  money 
or  kind,  generally  in  both.  Thus,  on  Cuxham  manor,5  we  find 
a  villein  (or  serf)  paying  his  lord  |d.  on  November  12th 
every  year,  and  Id.  whenever  he  brews.  He  also  pays,  in 

1  "  Wic-weorce,"  Sectitudines,  375  (Schmid). 

2  Seebohm,  V.  G.,  41,  78.  s  At  least  by  custom  ;  Seebohm,  p.  79. 

4  Thorold  Rogers,  Hist  of  Agric.,  ii.  329,  with  his  customary  complete- 
ness, gives  many  instances  of  rates  at  which  these  farm  servants  were  hired, 
including  ploughmen,  carters,  shepherds,  gardeners,  cowherds,  &c. ,  &c 

6  Thorold  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  40. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS  75 

kind,  1  quarter  of  seed -wheat  at  Michaelmas  ;  1  peck  of 
wheat,  4  bushels  of  oats,  and  3  hens  on  November  12th  ; 
also  1  cock  and  2  hens,  and  2d.  worth  of  bread  every 
Christmas.  His  services  are — to  plough  and  till  £-acre 
of  the  lord's  land,  to  give  3  days'  labour  at  harvest,  and 
other  days  when  required  by  the  bailiff.  This  was  the 
rent  for  about  12  or  15  acres  of  land  (half  a  virgate),  and, 
upon  a  calculation  of  the  worth  of  labour  and  provisions  at 
that  time  (end  of  thirteenth  century),  it  comes  to  about  6d. 
an  acre  for  his  land  and  3s.  a  year  for  his  house  and  the 
land  about  it  (curtilage). 

§  42.  Free  Tenants.     Sake-men. 

So  far  mention  has  been  made  only  of  tenants  in  villein- 
age ;  but  in  the  Domesday  Book  we  find  another  class  of 
tenants,  called  free,1  who  had  to  pay  a  fixed  rent,  either  in 
money  or  kind,  and  sometimes  in  labour.  This  rent  was 
fixed  and  unalterable  in  amount,  and  they  were  masters  of 
their  own  actions  as  soon  as  it  was  paid.  They  were  not 
like  the  villeins,  bound  to  the  soil,  but  could  transfer  their 
holdings,  or  even  quit  the  manor  if  they  liked.  They  were, 
however,  subject  to  their  lord's  jurisdiction  in  matters  of 
law,  and  hence  were  called  sake-men  (from  soke  or  soc  = 
jurisdiction  exercised  by  a  lord).2  They  also  were  bound 
to  give  military  service  when  called  upon,  which  the 
villeinage  tenants  had  not  to  give.  If  they  had  any 
services  to  render,  these  were  generally  commuted  into 
money  payments  ;  and  here  we  may  observe  that  there 
was  a  constant  tendency  3  from  the  Conquest  to  the  time 
of  the  Great  Plague  (1348)  towards  this  commutation. 
Villeins  also  could,  and  did  frequently,  commute  their 
labour  rents  for  money  rents. 

In  Domesday  we  find  that  the  Eastern  and  East-central 
counties 4  were  those  in  which  "  free  "  tenants  or  soke-men 

1  Lileri  homines,  sochemanni  ;  cf.  Seebohm,  V.  0.,  pp.  87,  88.         2  Ib. 

1  The  whole  of  the  services,  both  week-work  and  boon-days,  are  found 
occasionally  commuted  as  early  as  1240  ;  Ashley,  Econ.  Hint. ,  I.  c. ,  i.  p.  31. 
Complete  commutation  became  general  by  the  reign  of  Edward  II.  Rogers, 
Six  Centurita,  p.  218. 

4  Ellis  gives  10,097  liberi  homines,  of  which  more  than  half  (5344)  were 


76  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

were  most  prevalent.  There  they  form  from  27  to  45  per 
cent  of  the  inhabitants  of  those  parts,  though,  taking  all 
England  into  view,  they  only  form  4  per  cent,  of  the  total 
population.1  It  is  almost  certain  that  they  were  of  Danish 
or  (later)  of  Norman  origin  ;  for  it  is  in  the  Danish 
districts  that  they  are  chiefly  found,  and  their  position  is 
exceptional  and  privileged.  The  number  of  free  tenants, 
however,  was  constantly  increasing,  even  among  tenants  in 
villeinage,  for  the  lord  often  found  it  more  useful  to  have 
money,  and  was  willing  to  allow  commutation  of  services  ; 
or,  again,  he  might  prefer  not  to  cultivate  all  his  own  land 
(his  demesne),  but  to  let  it  for  a  fixed  money  rent  not  only 
to  a  freeman  but  to  a  villein  2  to  do  what  he  could  with  it, 
and  thus  the  villein  became  a  free  man,  while  the  lord 
was  sure  of  a  fixed  sum  from  his  land  every  year,  whether 
the  harvest  were  good  or  bad. 

§  43.   The  Distinction  between  Free  and  Unfree  Tenants. 

The  classification  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  manors  which 
we  have  just  examined  is  based  upon  the  classification  of 
Domesday.  But,  like  that  of  Domesday,  though  clear  in 
its  main  features,  it  is  rough  and  even  artificial.  In  fact, 
being  drawn  up  for  the  purposes  of  a  fiscal  survey,  the 
Domesday  inquirers  classed  the  various  kinds  of  tenants 
under  heads  "  too  few  and  simple  to  be  accurate."  In 
Domesday  the  demesne  land  is  distinguished  from  land 
held  "  in  villeinage,"  and  the  Book  does  not  recognise  free 
tenants  (libere  tenentes)  on  land  in  villeinage,  because,  for 
the  purposes  of  the  survey,  such  tenants  were  practically 
villeins,  and,  therefore,  "  unfree."  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
there  were  in  those  times  many  people  whom  Domesday 
regarded  simply  as  villani  who  were  really  more  free  than 
ordinary  villeins.3  But  this  the  Norman  surveyors,  and 

in  Suffolk  ;  also  2041  liberi  homines  commendati  (1895  in  Suffolk),  and  no  less 
than  23,072  sochemanni.  Introd.,  pp.  511-514. 

1  See  also  the  maps  in  Seebohm,  V.  C.,  p.  86. 

2  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  I.  i.  p.  27,  who  quotes  the  case  of  Ralph  de  Diceto 
in  Domesday  of  St  Paul's,  114. 

3  For  instance,  free  men  often  took,  in  addition  to  their  own  land,  a 
villein  holding  with  the  services  attached  to  it,  but  still  preserved  their 
personal  freedom. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS     77 

the  Norman  lawyers  of  the  same  period,  could  not  under- 
stand.1 They  were  inclined  to  follow  the  theory  of  Roman 
Law,  which  recognised  no  middle  position  between  freedom 
and  slavery.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  notice  after  the 
Conquest  a  continual  attempt  to  degrade  the  villein  in  the 
eyes  of  the  law  by  accentuating  all  the  servile  elements  in 
his  condition,  and  ignoring  the  very  numerous  elements 
that  betoken  some  kind  of  freedom. 

It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  we  find  a  persistent  tradition, 
to  which  modern  investigation  gives  no  slight  support,  to  the 
effect  that  the  freedom  of  the  villein  was  greater  in  Saxon 
than  in  Norman  times.2  It  is  even  held  3  that  the  privileged 
socmen  represent  a  state  of  freedom  that  at  one  time  was 
the  normal  condition  of  villeins.  However  this  may  be,  we 
may  arrive  with  some  certainty  at  the  conclusions  already 
indicated  4  :  (1)  An  analysis  of  the  legal  evidence  of  Norman 
times  shows  that  the  classification  of  society  into  villeins 
(or  "  unfree  "  men)  and  freeholders  is  comparatively  late  and 
artificial.5  (2)  For  there  existed  between  these  two  clearly- 
marked  classes  a  large  body  of  "  customary "  freeholders,6 
and  from  these  customary  holders  the  ranks  of  the  villeins 
were  constantly  recruited,  as  the  legal  minds  of  the  day 
tended  to  debase  the  condition  of  freedom  which  the  custom- 
ary holders  possessed.  But  (3)  originally  the  customary 
freeholders  formed  the  main  bulk  of  the  population. 

Now,  the  work  of  the  statesmen  and  lawyers  of  Norman 
times  tended  to  change  the  "  customary "  freedom  of  the 
villein  into  an  almost  complete  servitude  from  the  legal 
point  of  view.7  But,  on  the  other  hand,  economic  forces 
were  at  work  which  tended  inevitably  to  give  the  villein 
more  and  more  practical,  if  not  legal,  freedom.  The  advan- 
tages of  a  settled  government,  the  extension  of  commerce 
and  manufactures,  and  the  prosperity  gained  thereby  under 

1  Domesday  even  regarded  the  free  men  in  Kent  and  in  Danish  manors  in 
Essex  as  villani.    Vinogradoff,  V.  in  E. ,  p.  208. 

2  Vinogradoff,  V.  in  E.,  p.  135,  though  Seebohm  rather  doubts  it ;  see  his 
criticism  in  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  July  1892,  p.  449. 

8  Vinogradoff,  p.  136.  4  P.  56. 

8  Villeinage  in  England,  pp.  177,  220.  B  See  p.  56  above. 

7  Cf.  Vinogradoff,  V.  in  E.,  p.  45,  and  note. 


78  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  cover  of  the  law  and  order  established  very  soon  after 
the  Conquest,  all  gave  back  to  the  villein  tenants  on  the 
economic  and  industrial  side  far  more  than  the  lawyers 
took  away  in  legal  definitions  and  status.1  The  economic 
effects  of  the  new  industry,  commerce,  and  prosperity 
became  the  source  of  a  practical  freedom,2  which  existed 
none  the  less  surely  though  it  was  persistently  ignored  by 
the  lawyers  ;  and  this  practical  freedom  grew  greater  and 
greater,  till  at  last,  in  spite  of  legal  definitions,  villeinage 
became  a  state  more  of  antiquarian  than  of  actual  interest. 
The  Peasants'  Revolt  of  1381  opened  the  eyes  of  England 
to  this  fact,  and  from  that  year  the  death-knell  of  villeinage 
as  a  practical  institution  was  already  sounded. 

§  44.  Illustrations  of  Manors  from  Domesday. 

But  this  is  greatly  to  anticipate  the  story  of  industrial 
development.  We  must  return  to  the  manors  of  Norman 
days,  and  it  will  perhaps  be  well  to  give  two  illustrations 
drawn  from  the  Domesday  Book  (eleventh  century)  and  from 
bailiffs'  accounts  of  a  later  period  (end  of  thirteenth  century). 

First,  we  will  take  a  manor  in  Warwickshire  in  the 
Domesday  Survey3  (1089) — Estone,  now  Aston,  near  Bir- 
mingham. It  was  one  of  a  number  belonging  to  William, 
the  son  of  Ansculf,  who  was  tenant-in-chief,  but  had  let  it 
to  one  Godmund,  a  sub-tenant,  or  tenant-in-mesne.  The 
Survey  runs — "  William  Fitz-Ansculf  holds  of  the  King 
Estone,  and  Godmund  of  him.  There  are  8  hides.4  The 
arable  employs  20  ploughs ;  in  the  demesne  the  arable 
employs  6  ploughs,  but  now  there  are  no  ploughs.  There 
are  30  villeins  with  a  priest,  and  1  bondsman,  and  12 
bordars  (i.e.,  cottars).  They  have  18  ploughs.  A  mill  pays 

1  This  follows  the  view  of  Seebohm  (cf.  his  remarks  in  Eng.  Hist.  Rev., 
July  1892,  p.  457). 

2  A  serf  or  villein  could  in  later  days  even  become  a  knight,  as  did  Sir 
Robert  Sale,  or  a  bishop,  as  did  Grostete  of  Lincoln      Rogers,  Six  Cen- 
turies, p.  32. 

3  Domesday  of  Warwick,  q.v. 

4  A  hide  varied  in  size,  and  was  (after  the  Conquest)  equal  to  a  carucate, 
which  might  be  anything  from  80  to  120  or  180  acres.      See  Cunningham, 
Growth  of  E)itj.  Industry,  i.  120,  and  cf.  note  1,  p.  65  above. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS    79 

three  shillings.    The  woodland  is  three  miles  long  and  half-a- 
mile  broad.     It  was  worth  £4  ;  now  100  shillings." 

Here  we  have  a  good  example  of  a  manor  held  by  a  sub- 
tenant, and  containing  all  the  three  classes  mentioned  be- 
fore in  this  chapter — villeins,  cottars,  and  slaves  (i.e.,  bonds- 
men). The  whole  manor  must  have  been  about  5000 
acres,  of  which  1000  were  probably  arable  land,  which  was 
of  course  parcelled  out  in  strips  among  the  villeins,  the  lord, 
and  the  priest.  As  there  were  only  18  ploughs  among  30 
villeins,  it  is  evident  that  some  of  them  at  least  had  to  use 
a  plough  and  oxen  in  common.  The  demesne  land  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  well  cultivated  by  Godmund  the  lord,  for 
there  were  no  ploughs  on  it,  though  it  was  large  enough  to 
employ  six.  Perhaps  Godmund,  being  an  Englishman,  had 
been  fighting  the  Normans  in  the  days  of  Harold,  and  had 
let  it  go  out  of  cultivation,  or  perhaps  the  former  owner 
had  died  in  the  war,  and  Godmund  had  rented  the  land 
from  the  Norman  noble  to  whom  William  gave  it. 

§  45.  Cuxham  Manor  in  the  Eleventh  and  Thirteenth 
Centuries. 

Our  second  illustration  can  be  described  at  two  periods 
of  its  existence — at  the  time  of  Domesday  and  200  years 
later.  It  was  only  a  small  manor  of  some  500  acres,  and 
was  held  by  a  sub-tenant  from  a  Norman  tenant-in-chief, 
Milo  Crispin.  It  is  found  in  the  Oxfordshire  Domesday,  in 
the  list  of  lands  belonging  to  Milo  Crispin.  The  Survey 
says  :  "  Alured  [the  sub-tenant]  now  holds  5  hides  for  a 
manor  in  Cuxham.  Land  for  4  ploughs  ;  now  in  the 
demesne,  2  ploughs  and  4  bondsmen.  And  7  villeins  with 
4  bordars  have  3  ploughs.  There  are  3  mills  of  18 
shillings ;  and  18  acres  of  meadow.  It  was  worth  £3,  now 
£6."  Here,  again,  the  three  classes  of  villeins,  cottar:;  or 
bordars,  and  slaves  are  represented.  The  manor  was 
evidently  a  good  one,  for  though  smaller  than  Estone,  it  was 
worth  more,  and  has  three  mills  and  good  meadow  land  as 
well.  Now,  by  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  this 
manor  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  Merton  College, 
Oxford,  which  then  represented  the  lord,  but  farmed  it  by 


8o  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

means  of  a  bailiff.  Professor  Thorold  Rogers  gives  us  a 
description  of  it,1  drawn  from  the  annual  accounts  of  this 
bailiff,  which  he  examined  along  with  many  others  from 
other  manors.  We  find  one  or  two  changes  have  taken 
place,  for  the  bondsmen  have  entirely  disappeared,  as 
indeed  they  did  in  less  than  a  century  after  the  Conquest 
all  through  the  land.  The  number  of  villeins  and  bordars 
has  increased,  for  there  are  now  13  villeins  and  8  cottars 
and  1  free  tenant.  There  is  also  a  prior,  who  holds  land 
(6  acres)  in  the  manor  but  does  not  live  in  it  ;  also  two 
other  tenants,  who  do  not  live  in  the  manor,  but  hold  "  a 
quarter  of  a  knight's  fee  "  (here  some  40  or  50  acres) — 
a  knight's  fee 2  comprising  an  area  of  land  varying  from 
2  hides  to  4  or  even  6  hides,  but  in  any  case  worth 
some  £20.  As  the  Cuxham  land  was  good,  the  quantity 
necessary  for  the  valuation  of  a  fee  would  probably  be  only 
the  small  hide  or  carucate  of  80  acres,  and  the  quarter  of 
it,  of  course,  2  0  acres  or  a  little  more.  The  1 3  serfs  hold 
170  acres,  but  the  8  cottars  only  30  acres,  including  their 
tenements.  The  free  tenant  holds  12f  acres,  and  Merton 
College  as  lord  of  the  manor  some  240  acres  of  demesne. 
There  are  now  two  mills  instead  of  three,  one  belonging  to 
the  prior  and  the  other  to  another  tenant.  There  were  alto- 
gether, counting  the  families  of  the  villeins  and  cottars,  but  not 
the  two  tenants  of  military  fees,  about  60  or  70  inhabitants, 
the  most  important  being  the  college  bailiff  and  the  miller. 

§  46.   A  Village  of  the  Eleventh  Century, 

Now  in  both  these  countiy  manors,  as  in  all  others,  the 
central  feature  would  be  the  dwelling  of  the  lord,  or  manor- 
house.  It  was  substantially  built,  and  served  as  a  court- 
house for  the  sittings  of  the  court  baron  and  the  court  leet.3 

1  Six  Centuries,  p.  41. 

2  It  is  very  difficult  to  state  exactly  what  a  knight's  fee  really  was ; 
Stubbs,   Const.  Hist.,  I.   xi.  p.  431.      Cf.   Pearson,    Early   and   Middle 
Ages,  i.  375,  and  ii.  463,  who  puts  it  at  about  5  hides,  or  a  rental  of  £20. 

3  Manorial  Courts. — The  court  baron  was  composed  of  a  kind  of  jury  of 
freeholders,  and  was  concerned  with  civil  proceedings.     The  court  leet  was 
composed   of  all  tenants,  both  free  and   serf,   who  acted  as  a  jury  in 
criminal  cases,  minor  offences,  and  so  forth.     Both  courts  were  presided 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS  81 

If  the  lord  did  not  live  in  it,  his  bailiff  did  so,  and  perhaps 
the  lord  would  come  occasionally  himself  to  hold  these 
courts,  or  his  bailiff  might  preside.  Near  the  manor- 
house  generally  stood  the  church,  often  large  for  the 
size  of  the  village,  because  the  nave  was  frequently  used  as 
a  town-hall  for  meetings  or  for  markets.1  Then  there 
would  be  the  house  of  the  priest,  possibly  in  the  demesne ; 
and  after  these  two  the  most  important  building  was  the 
mill,  which,  if  there  was  a  stream,  would  be  placed  on  its 
banks  in  order  to  use  the  water-power.  The  rest  of  the 
tenants  generally  inhabited  the  principal  street  or  road  2  of 
the  village,  near  the  stream,  if  one  ran  through  the  place. 
The  average  population  of  an  eleventh  century  village 
must  have  been  about  150  persons.3  The  houses  of  these 
villages  were  poor  and  dirty,  not  always  made  of  stone, 
and  never  (till  the  fifteenth  century)  of  brick,4  but  built  of 
posts  wattled  and  plastered  with  clay  or  mud,5  with  an 
upper  storey  of  poles  reached  by  a  ladder.  The  articles  of 
furniture  would  be  very  coarse  and  few,  being  necessarily 
of  home  manufacture ;  a  few  rafters  or  poles  overhead,  a 
bacon-rack,  and  agricultural  tools  being  the  most  conspicuous 
objects.  Chimneys  were  unknown,  except  in  the  manor- 
houses,  and  so  too  were  windows,  and  the  floor  was  of  bare 
earth.  Outside  the  door  was  the  "  mixen,"  a  collection  of 
every  kind  of  manure  and  refuse,6  which  must  have  ren- 
dered the  village  street  alike  unsavoury,  unsightly,  and 

over  by  the  lord  of  the  manor  or  his  bailiff.  Thus  local  discipline  and  law 
was  concentrated  in  the  hands  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  parish  themselves, 
and  the  manorial  courts  were  a  very  useful  means  of  education  in  local 
self-government.  Unfortunately  their  power,  utility,  and  educational 
influence  declined  with  the  decay  of  the  whole  manorial  system.  Cf. 
Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  63  and  420  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  L  xi.  399  ; 
Maitland,  Select  Pleas,  I.  Ixv.  ;  and  Vinogradoff,  V.  in  E.,  pp.  362,  365,  and 
ch.  v.  of  Essay  II. 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  66.  2Gomme,  ViU.  Comm.,  p.  173. 

8  We  can  easily  compute  this  by  dividing  the  Domesday  population 
(283,342)  by  the  number  of  manors  (9250),  which  gives  about  30  able-bodied 
men  per  village,  or  150  persons  if  we  multiply  by  five. 

4  Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation  oj  History,  p.  279. 

*Cf.  Gomme,  Vill.  Comm.,  p.  44. 

8  This  is  very  noticeable  in  certain  villages  of  the  Belgian  Ardennes — 
e.y.,  Sommiere,  near  Dinant. 

F 


82  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

unwholesome.  But  though  their  life  was  rude  and  rough,  it 
seems  that  the  villagers  were  fairly  happy,  and,  considering  all 
things,  not  much  worse  off  than  their  descendants  are  now.1 
Of  course  it  is  very  difficult  to  compare  the  life  of  different 
ages,  especially  of  periods  so  diverse  as  the  eleventh  or 
thirteenth  century  and  the  nineteenth.  But  it  would  be 
true  to  say  that  a  mediaeval  labourer  was  often  better  off 
as  regards  food 2  than  the  unskilled  labourer  of  to-day, 
though,  on  the  other  hand,  he  may  have  been  worse  clad 
and  worse  housed.  One  thing,  perhaps,  balances  another. 
Yet  probably  the  social  life  of  the  mediaeval  village, 
with  its  active  manor  courts  and  parish  councils,  was 
more  interesting  than  that  of  a  nineteenth  century 
country  parish,  and  the  villager,  though  a  villein,  had  a 
greater  voice  in  parish  affairs  than  his  modern  repre- 
sentative, except  quite  recently,  possessed. 

It  is  necessary,  in  order  to  complete  our  sketch  of  the 
manorial  system  from  the  time  of  the  Conquest  onwards,  to 
understand  how  the  land  was  divided  up.  We  may  say 
that  there  were  seven  kinds  of  land  altogether.  (1)  First 
came  the  lord's  land  round  about  the  manor-house,  the 
demesne  land,  which  was  strictly  his  own,  and  generally 
cultivated  in  early  times  by  himself  or  his  bailiff.  All 
other  land  held  by  tenants  was  called  land  in  villeinage. 
(2)  Next  came  the  arable  land  of  the  village,  held  by  the 
tenants  in  common  fields.3  Now  these  fields  were  all 
divided  up  into  many  strips,  and  tenants  held  their  strips 
generally  in  quite  different  places,  all  mixed  up  in  any  order  4 

1 1  am  inclined  to  follow  the  view  of  Thorold  Rogers  in  this  (c/.  Six  Cen- 
turies, pp.  68,  69),  with  whom  Dr  Cunningham,  after  all,  practically  agrees 
(Eng.  Industry,  i.  275).  In  estimating  comparative  prosperity,  we  must 
regard  the  possibilities  of  each  age,  and  how  far  the  villager  attained  them 
then  or  can  do  so  now.  Almost  certainly  he  came  nearer  to  such 
possibilities  as  there  were  than  his  modern  brother  does.  Hasty  denials 
of  mediaeval  prosperity  and  comfort  only  betoken  ignorance. 

2  Cunningham,  i.  275. 

3  Seebohm,  Vill.  Comm. ,  pp.  1  -27,  and  the  maps  there ;  Gomme,  Village  Com- 
munity, pp.  194,  166 ;  Cunningham,  Eng.  Industry  and  Commerce,  i.  70,  71. 

4  "A  single  farmer  might  have  to  cut  his  portion  of  grass  from  twenty 
different  places,  though  the  tenants  frequently  accommodated  one  another 
by  exchanging  allotments  when  it  was  convenient  to  do  so."    Gomme, 
Vitt.  Comm.,  p.  166. 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS     83 

(cf.  diagram,  where  the  tenants  are  marked  A,  B,  C,  &c.). 
The  lord l  and  the  parson  might  also  have  a  few  strips  in 
these  fields.  There  were  at  least  three  fields,  in  order  to 
allow  the  rotation  of  crops  mentioned  before  (p.  40).  Each 
tenant  held  his  strip  only  till  harvest,  after  which  all  fences 
and  divisions  were  taken  away,  and  the  cattle  turned  out 
to  feed  on  the  stubble.  (3)  Thirdly  came  the  common 
pasture,  for  all  the  tenants.  But  each  tenant  was  restricted 
or  stinted  in  the  number  of  cattle  that  he  might  pasture,2 
lest  he  should  put  on  too  many,  and  thus  not  leave  enough 
food  for  his  neighbours'  cattle.  Sometimes,  however,  we 
find  pasture  without  stint,  as  in  Port  Meadow  at  Oxford  to 
this  day.3  (4)  Then  comes  the  forest  or  woodland,  as  in 
Estone,  which  belonged  to  the  lord,  who  owned  all  the 
timber.  But  the  tenants  had  rights,  such  as  the  right  of 
lopping  and  topping  certain  trees,  collecting  fallen  branches 
for  fuel,  and  the  right  of  "  pannage  " — i.e.,  of  turning  cattle, 
especially  swine,  into  the  woods  to  pick  up  what  food  they 
could.  (5)  There  was  also  in  most  manors  what  is  called 
the  waste — i.e.,  uncultivated  land,  affording  rough  pasture, 
and  on  which  the  tenants  had  the  right  of  cutting  turf  and 
bracken  for  fuel  and  fodder.  Then  near  the  stream  there 
would  perhaps  be  some  (6)  Meadow  land,  as  at  Cuxham, 
but  this  generally  belonged  to  the  lord,  who,  if  he  let  it 
out,  always  charged  an  extra  rent  (and  often  a  very  high 
one),4  for  it  was  very  valuable  as  affording  a  good  supply  of 
hay  for  the  winter.  Lastly,  if  the  tenant  could  afford  it, 
and  wanted  to  have  other  land  besides  the  common  fields, 
where  he  could  let  his  cattle  lie,  or  to  cultivate  the  ground 
more  carefully,  he  could  occupy  (7)  a  close,  or  a  portion  of 
land  specially  marked  off  and  let  separately.6  The  lord 
always  had  a  close  on  his  demesne,  and  the  chief  tenants 
would  generally  have  one  or  two  as  well.  The  close  land  was 
of  course  rented  more  highly  than  land  in  the  common  fields. 
The  accompanying  diagram  shows  a  typical  manor,  held 
by  a  sub-tenant  from  a  tenant-in-chief,  who  holds  it  of  the 
king.  It  contains  all  the  different  kinds  of  land,  though, 

1  Vinogradoff,  V.  in  E.,  p.  406.  2  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  90. 

•  /&.,  p.  74.  «  76.,  p.  73.  B  76.,  p  89. 


84 


INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 


of   course,    they  did    not  always  all   exist  in    one  manor. 
It  also  shows  the  manor-house,  church,  mill,  and  village. 

THE  KING  (supreme  landlord). 
TENANT-IN-CHIEF,  owning  various  manors. 


A  SUB-TENANT,  or  tenant-in-mesne,  the  lord  of  the 
manor  below. 


Waste, 


Common  Fields  with  tenants'  strips 
~A 


§  47.   TAe  Decay  of  the  Manorial  System. 

Such,  then,  was  the  manorial  village  and  the  manorial 
system  generally  in  the  eleventh  century,  and  thus  it  lasted 


DOMESDAY  BOOK  AND  THE  MANORS     85 

for  two  or  three  centuries  more.  But  in  course  of  time  it 
died  out,  though  survivals  of  it  last  even  to  our  own 
day. 

The  decay  of  this  social  and  economic  system  begins 
most  clearly  and  markedly  with  the  changes  made  by  the 
Black  Death  (1348),  and  by  the  social  revolution  which 
followed  it,  of  which  the  Peasants'  Revolt  was  the  first 
and  most  startling  symptom  (cf.  ch.  xii.).  The  legisla- 
tion of  Edward  I.  forms,  again,  another  epoch  from  which 
to  date  the  decay  of  manorial  institutions.  He  laid  the 
foundations  of  a  system  of  national  instead  of  local  regu- 
lations for  industry,  and  from  that  time  forward  the 
essentially  local  arrangements  of  the  manors  began  to  lose 
both  their  necessity  and  their  utility.1  As  Dr  Cunningham 
says — "  In  regard  to  commerce,  manufactures,  and  to  agri- 
culture alike,  the  local  authorities  were  gradually  overtaken 
and  superseded  by  the  increasing  activity  of  Parliament, 
till,  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth,  the  work  was  practically 
finished."2  The  essentially  local  and  personal  relations  of 
the  manor  gave  way  to  the  more  general  and  impersonal 
relations  of  national  government  and  national  economy. 

1  Cunningham,  Industry  and  Commerce,  i.  pp.  241-245.  2  76.,  p.  243. 


CHAPTER    VI 

THE    TOWNS   AND   THE   GILDS 

§   48.   The  Origin  of  the   Towns. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  village,  so  also  the  town,  in 
the  modern  sense  of  the  word,  had  its  origin  in  the 
primitive  settlements  of  the  people.  The  only  differ- 
ence between  a  town  and  a  village  lay,  originally,  in 
the  numher  of  inhabitants,  and  in  the  fact  that  the  town 
was  a  more  defensible  place  than  the  rural  settlement,  since 
it  probably  had  a  rampart  or  a  moat  surrounding  it  instead 
of  the  mere  hedges  which  ran  round  the  villages.1  It  was 
simply  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  a  more  strictly  organised 
form  of  the  village  community.2  In  itself  it  was  merely  a 
manor  or  group  of  manors  ;  as  Professor  Freeman  puts  it, 
one  part  of  the  district  where  men  lived  closer  together 
than  elsewhere.3  The  town  had  at  first  a  constitution 
like  that  of  the  primitive  village,  but  its  inhabitants  had 
gradually  gained  certain  rights  and  functions  of  a  special 
nature.4  These  rights  and  privileges  had  sometimes  been 
received  from  the  lord  of  the  manor  on  which  the  town 
had  grown  up 5 ;  for  towns,  especially  provincial  towns, 
were  often  at  first  only  dependent  manors,  which  gained 
safety  and  solidity  under  the  protection  of  some  great 
noble,  prelate,  or  the  king  himself ; 6  who  finally  would 
grant  the  town  thus  formed  a  charter.7 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  v.  92.     The  Anglo-Saxons  called  them  "  burh" 
— i.e.,  "boroughs."  2  /&.  s  Norman  Conquest,  v.  p.  470. 

4  Thus  Lincoln,  Stamford,  and  other  towns  had  certain  rights  of  juris- 
diction, sac  and  soc  ;  Domesday  (Lincoln). 

5  In  other  cases  they  were  probably  the  inherited  rights  of  a  free  com- 
munity. 

6  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  v.  p.  93,  who  quotes  examples  of  the  eorles  tun,, 
cyninges  burh,  cyninges  tun. 

7  This  charter  would  give  rights  of  jurisdiction  over  the  citizens,  of  taking 
toll,  &c. ;  cf.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  v.  106.     Such  rights  were  also  granted 
to  private  individuals. 

86 


THE  TOWNS  AND  THE  GILDS  87 

§  49.  Rise  of  Towns  in  England. 

Towns  first  became  important  in  England  towards  the 
end  of  the  Saxon  period.  Saxon  England  had  never  been 
a  settlement  of  towns,  but  of  villages  or  manors.  But 
gradually  towns  developed,  though  differing  widely  in  the 
circumstances  and  manner  of  their  growth.  Some  grew 
up  in  the  fortified  camps  of  the  invaders  themselves,1  as 
being  in  a  secure  position ;  some  arose  from  a  later  occupa- 
tion of  the  once  sacked  and  deserted  Roman  towns.2  Many 
grew  silently  in  the  shadow  of  a  great  abbey  or  monastery.8 
Of  this  class  was  Oxford,  which  first  came  into  being  round 
the  monasteries  of  Osney  and  S.  Frideswide.  Others 
clustered  round  the  country  houses  of  some  Saxon  king  or 
earl.4  Several  important  boroughs  owed  their  rise  to  the 
convenience  of  their  site  as  a  port  or  a  trading  centre. 
This  was  the  origin  of  the  growth  of  Bristol,  whose  rise 
resulted  directly  from  trade  ;5  and  London  of  course  had 
always  been  a  port  of  high  commercial  rank.6  A  few  other 
towns,  like  Scarborough  and  Grimsby,7  were  at  first  only 
small  havens  for  fishermen.  But  all  the  English  towns 
were  far  less  flourishing  before  the  arrival  of  the  Normans 
than  they  afterwards  became. 

The  influence  of  the  Danes,  however,  should  be  noted  as 

1  Especially  in  the  case  of  the  Danes ;  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry, 
i.  91 ;  Green,  Hist,  of  Eng.  People,  i.  207. 

2  Some  of  the  Roman  towns  never  quite  lost  their  continuity  of  life ;  cf. 
Jessop,  Studies  by  a  Recluse,  p.   120,  who  instances  London,  Chester, 
Lincoln,  and  Exeter  ;  cf.  also  Green,  History,  i.  207. 

8  Stubbs,  I.  v.  93 ;  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  v.  471 ;  Rogers,  Six 
Centuries,  p.  103. 

4  Green  (History,  i.  207)  evidently  follows  Stubbs,  «.«. 

8  From  very  early  times  it  had  an  active  trade  with  Ireland  ;  cf.  Cun- 
ningham, Growth  of  Industry,  i.  89,  note ;  and  Craik,  British  Commerce, 
L  72. 

6  Probably  it  was  originally  a  hill-fort ;  and  its  name  is  said  to  mean 
the  ' '  hill  fort  by  the  water. "    Its  importance  in  Roman  times  was  very 
great ;  Green,  Making  of  England,  p.  3.     In  Saxon  times  it  was  left  much 
to  itself,  but  hedged  in  with  a  ring  of  Saxon  agricultural  settlements. 
Gomme,  Village  Comm. ,  p.  52. 

7  A  fair  attended  by  foreign  merchants  was  held  in  Saxon  times  on 
Scarborough  beach  ;  Cunningham,  i.  82,  n.     Grimsby  merchants  are  men- 
tioned in  Rymer,  Foedera,  II.  i.  110,  133.     See  also  Rogers,  Six  Centuries, 
104. 


88  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

promoting  the  growth  of  towns.  Though  undoubtedly 
pirates,  the  Danish  invaders  were  often  also  merchants,  and 
often  planted  villages  at  centres  suitable  for  commerce,  or 
stimulated  by  their  trade  the  growth  of  places  which  but 
for  their  coming  might  have  remained  undeveloped.1  More- 
over, it  is  the  towns  of  Danish  origin  that  frequently  show 
the  most  ancient  municipal  organisation  ;  as  the  records 
of  the  five  "  Danish  boroughs  " — Nottingham,  Derby,  Lin- 
coln, Stamford,  and  Leicester — go  to  prove.2  Even  to-day 
near  the  heart  of  modern  London  the  Church  of  St  Clement 
Danes  reminds  us  of  those  rough  seafaring  men,  half 
pirates  half  traders,  whose  patron  saint  was  Clement  with 
his  anchor.8 

§  50.  Towns  in  Domesday. 

If  now  we  once  more  go  back  to  our  great  authority,  the 
survey  made  by  William  the  Norman,  we  find  that  the 
status  of  the  towns  or  boroughs  is  clearly  recognised,  though 
they  are  now  regarded  as  held  by  the  lord  of  the  manor 
"  in  demesne,"  or,  in  default  of  a  lord,  as  part  of  the  king's 
demesne.4  Thus  Northampton  at  that  time  was  a  town  in 
the  king's  demesne  ;  Beverley  was  held  in  demesne  by  the 
Archbishop  of  York.5  It  was  possible,  too,  that  one  town 
might  belong  to  several  lords,  because  it  spread  over,  or 
was  an  aggregate  of,  several  manors  or  townships.  Thus 
Leicester6  seems  to  have  included  four  manors,  which  were 
thus  held  in  demesne  by  four  lords — one  by  the  king, 
another  by  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  another  by  a  noble, 
Simon  de  Senlis,  and  the  fourth  by  Ivo  of  Grantmesnil,  the 
sheriff.  In  later  times  it  was  held  under  one  lord,  Count 
Robert  of  Meulan,  who  had  acquired  the  four  portions  for 
himself. 

Now,  in  the  Domesday  Book  there  is  mention  made  of 
forty-one  provincial  cities  or  boroughs,  most  of  them  being 

1  Cunningham,  i  88. 

2  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  v.  p.  93.     For  many  years  these  five  towns 
held  together  in  a  confederation  which  was  the  backbone  of  Danish  power 
in  the  Midlands;  cf.  Jessop,  Studies,  p.  126. 

3  For  Danish  influence  see  York  Powell,  Eng.  Hist.  Review,  No.  XVII. 
p.  134.          *  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  xi.  408.  6  Ib.,  p.  409.  6  Ib. 


THE  TOWNS  AND  THE  GILDS  89 

the  county  towns  of  the  present  day.1  There  are  also  ten 
fortified  towns  of  greater  importance  than  the  others.  They 
are  Canterbury,  York,  Nottingham,  Oxford,  Hereford, 
Leicester,  Lincoln,  Stafford,  Chester,  and  Colchester.1 
London  was  a  town  apart,  as  it  had  always  been,  and  was 
the  only  town  which  had  an  advanced  civic  constitution, 
being  regulated  by  a  port-reeve  and  a  bishop,2  and  having 
a  kind  of  charter,  though  afterwards  the  privileges  of  this 
charter  were  much  increased.  London  was  of  course  a 
great  port  and  trading  centre,  and  had  many  foreign 
merchants  in  it.  It  was  then,  as  well  as  in  subsequent 
centuries,  the  centre  of  English  national  life,  and  the  voice 
of  its  citizens  counted  for  something  in  national  affairs.8 
The  other  great  ports  of  England  at  that  time  were  Bristol, 
Southampton,4  and  Norwich,5  and  as  trade  grew  and  pros- 
pered, many  other  ports  rose  into  prominence  (see  p.  144). 
There  were  also  other  towns  which  grew  up  merely  as 
aggregates  of  traders,  and  had  not  acquired  as  yet  any  other 
cohesion  than  as  organised  communities.  These  formed 
the  large  class  of  mere  market  towns,  which  of  course  still 
exist  in  large  numbers,  still  serving  the  purpose  to  which 
they  originally  owed  their  existence  without  growing  much 
beyond  their  old  proportions. 

§  51.  Special  Privileges  of  Towns. 

It  is  not  till  the  twelfth  century  that  the  towns  begin  to 
have  an  independent  municipal  history  as  self-governing 
boroughs,6  nor  is  it  till  the  fifteenth  century  that  we  come 
to  advanced  municipal  life  and  organisation.  But,  even  at 
the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  most  towns,  though 
small,  were  of  sufficient  importance  to  have  a  certain  status 
of  their  own,  with  definite  privileges.7  The  privilege  they 
strove  for  first  of  all  was  generally  an  immunity  from  appear- 
ing before  the  Court  of  Appeal  where  the  king's  officer 

1  Stubhs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  xi.  403.  a  lb.,  p.  404. 

3  Of.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  109. 

4  It  was  the  chief  port  of  Southern  England ;  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  104. 
'/&.,  p.  106.     It  was  famed  for  its  harbour;  and,  like  many  another 

disused  port  of  the  east  coast,  did  a  large  trade  with  the  Netherlands. 
6  Mrs  Green,  Town  Life,  i.  p.  11.  7  Stubbs,  I.  xi.  408. 


90  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

presided  and  levied  his  fees  ; l  but  perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant privilege  was  the  second  one — the  immunity  from 
the  personal  taxation  exacted  by  the  officers  of  the  Royal 
Exchequer,  and  collected  by  the  sheriff.2  To  gain  their 
points  they  asked,  first,  the  rights  of  choosing  their  own 
justiciar,3  or  official  who  should  preside  in  the  town  court 
and  relieve  them  from  the  necessity  of  appearing  at  other 
courts  ;  and  then  they  requested  the  liberty  of  taxing  them- 
selves, and  of  composition  for  taxation — i.e.,  the  right  of 
paying  a  fixed  sum  or  rent  to  the  Crown,  instead  of  the 
various  tallages,  taxes,  and  imposts  that  might  be  required 
of  other  places.4  This  fixed  sum,5  or  composition,  was 
called  the  firma  burgi,  and  by  the  time  of  the  Conquest 
was  nearly  always  paid  in  money.  Previously  it  had  been 
paid  both  in  money  and  kind,  for  we  find  Oxford  paying  to 
Edward  the  Confessor  six  sectaries  of  honey  as  well  as  £20 
in  coin ;  while  to  William  the  Norman  it  paid  £60  as  an 
inclusive  lump  sum.6  By  the  end  of  the  Norman  period  7 
all  the  towns  had  secured  the  firnia  burgi,  and  the  right  of 
assessing  it  themselves,  instead  of  being  assessed  by  the 
sheriff;  they  had  the  right  also  of  choosing  an  officer  of 
their  own,  instead  of  the  king's  bailiff  or  reeve.  They  had 
thus  their  own  tribunals,  a  charter  for  their  customs,  and 
special  rules  of  local  administration,  and,  generally  speaking, 
had  gained  entire  judicial  and  commercial  freedom. 

§  52.  How  the  Towns  obtained  their  Charters. 

It  is  interesting  to  see  what  circumstances  helped  forward 
this  emancipation  of  the  towns  from  the  rights  possessed  by 
the  nobles  and  the  abbeys,8  or  by  the  king.  The  chief 
cause  of  the  readiness  of  the  nobles  and  kings  to  grant 

1  Jessop,  Studies  of  a  Recluse,  p.  130.  2  Ib. 

8  As  in  the  Charter  to  London  given  by  Henry  I. ,  quoted  by  Stubbs, 
ut  ante,  p.  405.  *  Stubbs,  u.  s. ,  p.  410. 

5  Ellis,  Introd.  to  Domesday,  i.  190,  gives  many  examples. 

9  Ellis,  Introd.,  i.  193.  7  Stubbs,  u.  s.,  p.  424. 

8  A  noble,  bishop,  or  abbot  on  whose  demesne  a  town  existed  of  course 
had  the  judicial  and  other  rights  of  a  lord  of  the  manor  over  such  a  town, 
and  could  part  with  them  by  giving  a  charter.  Thus  Beverley  gained  its 
charter,  not  from  the  crown,  but  from  Archbishop  Thurstan.  Cf.  Stubbs, 
Const.  Hist.,  L  xL  411.  Manchester  remained  under  its  feudal  lord  till  1846. 


THE  TOWNS  AND  THE  GILDS  91 

charters  during  this  period  (from  the  Conquest  to  Henry 
III.)  was  their  lack  of  ready  money.  Everyone  knows  how 
fiercely  the  nobles  fought  against  each  other  in  Stephen's 
reign,  and  how  enthusiastically  they  rushed  off  to  the 
Crusades  under  Richard  I.  They  could  not  indulge  their 
love  of  fighting,  which  in  their  eyes  was  their  main  duty, 
without  money  to  pay  for  their  fatal  extravagances  in  this 
direction,  and  to  get  money  they  frequently  parted  with 
their  manorial  rights  over  the  towns  which  had  grown  up 
on  their  estates.1  Especially  was  this  the  case  when  a 
noble  or  king  was  taken  prisoner,  and  wanted  the  means 
of  his  ransom.2  In  this  way  Portsmouth  and  Norwich 
gained  their  charters  by  paying  part  of  Richard  I.'s  ransom 
(1194).  Again,  Rye  and  Winchelsea  gained  theirs  by 
supplying  the  same  king  (in  1191)  with  two  ships  to 
aid  his  Eastern  crusade.3  Many  other  instances  might  be 
quoted  from  the  cases  of  nobles  who  also  gave  charters 
when  setting  out  upon  these  extraordinary  expeditions. 
Indeed,  the  Crusades  had  a  very  marked  influence  in  this 
way  upon  the  growth  of  English  towns.  Some  one  had  to 
pay  for  the  wars  in  which  the  aristocracy  delighted,  and  it 
is  well  to  remember  the  fact  that  the  expenses  of  all  our 
wars — and  they  have  been  both  numerous  and  costly — 
have  been  defrayed  by  the  industrial  portion  of  the  com- 
munity. Even  the  glories  and  cruelties  of  that  often  savage 
age  of  so-called  knightly  chivalry,4  which  has  been  idealised 
and  gilded  by  romancers  and  history-mongers,  with  its 
tournaments  and  torture-chambers,  were  paid  for  by  that  de- 
spised industrial  population  of  the  towns  and  villages  which 
contained  the  real  life  and  wealth  of  mediaeval  England. 

§  53.  The  Gilds  and  the  Towns.      Various  kinds  of 
Gilds. 

But  besides  the  indirect  effect  of  the  Crusades,  there 
was  another  powerful  factor  in  the  growth  and  emancipa- 
tion of  the  towns  after  the  Conquest.  I  refer  to  the 
'merchant  gilds,  which  were  becoming  more  and  more  pro- 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  p.  198. 

1  Green,  History,  i.  212.  '  See  Rymer,  Foedera,  I.  63,  53. 

4  Cf.  the  Btate  of  things  instanced  by  Green,  History,  i.  156. 


92  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

minent  all  through  this  period,  though  the  height  of  their 
power  was  not  reached  till  the  fourteenth  century.  These 
merchant  gilds  were  one  of  four  other  kinds  of  gilds, 
all  of  which  seem  to  have  been  similar  in  origin.  The 
earliest  gilds  are  found  in  Saxon  times,1  and  were  very 
much  what  we  understand  by  clubs  at  the  present  day.  At 
first  they  were  associations  for  more  or  less  religious  and 
charitable  purposes,2  and  formed  a  sort  of  artificial  family, 
whose  members  were  bound  by  the  bond  not  of  kinship  but 
of  an  oath,  while  the  gild-feast,  held  once  a  month  in  the 
common  hall,  replaced  the  family  gatherings  of  kinsfolk. 
These  gilds  were  found  both  in  towns  and  villages,  but 
chiefly  in  the  former,  where  men  were  brought  more  closely 
together.  Besides  (1)  the  religious  gilds,  we  find  in 
Saxon  times  (2)  the  frith  gilds,3  formed  for  mutual  assist- 
ance in  case  of  violence,  wrong,  or  false  accusation,  or  in 
any  legal  affairs.  But  this  class  of  gilds  died  out  after  the 
Conquest.  The  most  important  were  (3)  the  'merchant 
gilds  mentioned  above,  which  existed  certainly  in  Edward 
the  Confessor's  time,  being  called  in  Saxon  ceapemanne  gilds, 
and  they  were  recognised  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest,  for 
they  are  recorded  in  Domesday  here  and  there  as  possessing 
lands.4  The  merchant  members  of  these  gilds  had  various 
privileges,  such  as  a  virtual  monopoly  of  the  local  trade  of 
a  town,  which  even  outsiders  were  not  allowed  to  infringe, 
and  freedom  from  certain  imposts.5  They  had,  at  any  rate  at 
first,  a  higher  rank  than  the  members  of  the  (4)  craft  gilds.6 
These  last  were  associations  of  handicraftsmen,  or  artisans, 
and  were  separate  from  the  merchant  gilds,  though  also  of 
great  importance.  If  a  town  were  large  enough,  each  craft 
or  manufacture  had  a  gild  of  its  own,  though  perhaps  in 
smaller  towns  members  of  various  crafts  would  form  only 
one  gild.  Such  gilds  were  found,  too,  not  only  in  towns 
but  in  country  villages,  as  is  known,  e.g.,  in  the  case  of 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist,  I.  xi.  p.  41 1 ,  who  gives  an  excellent  summary.  Cf. 
also  Brentano,  History  and  Development  of  Gilds,  and  Gross,  Gild  Merchant, 
for  further  information.  2  Stubbs,  ut  ante,  p.  412. 

3  They  were  possibly  earlier  than  the  religious  associations.  Cf.  Stubbs, 
tit  ante,  p.  414.  *  Ib.,  p.  416. 

6  Gross,  Gild  Merchant,  i.  44.  6  Stubbs,  ut  ante,  p.  417. 


THE  TOWNS  AND  THE  GILDS  93 

some  Norfolk  villages,  where  remains  of  their  halls  have 
been  found.1  Their  gild  feasts  are  probably  represented  to 
this  day  in  the  parish  feasts,  survivals  of  ancient  custom. 

§  54.  How  the  Mercliant  Gilds  helped  the  Growth  of 
Towns. 

Now  it  was  only  natural  that  the  existence  of  these 
powerful  associations  in  the  growing  boroughs  should  secure 
an  increasing  development  of  cohesion  and  unity  among 
the  townsmen.  Moreover,  the  merchant  gilds  had  a  very 
important  privilege,  which  would  make  many  outsiders 
anxious  to  join  their  ranks — namely,  that  membership  in  a 
gild  for  a  year  and  a  day  made  a  villein  a  free  man.2  Thus 
the  gilds  included  all  the  free  tenants  in  a  town,  and  very 
often  the  body  of  free  citizens,  who,  of  course,  as  free  men, 
formed  the  only  really  influential  class  in  a  town,  found 
themselves,  by  thus  uniting  together  in  a  gild,  "  craft,"  or 
"  mistery,"  in  a  position  to  gain  even  greater  influence 
than  before.  In  fact,  only  those  who  were  members  of  some 
gild  or  "  mistery  "  were  allowed  to  take  part  in  the  muni- 
cipal government  of  their  town.3  As  time  went  on,  and 
their  influence  grew,  it  became  the  special  endeavour  of 
the  gildmen  to  obtain  from  the  Crown  or  from  their  lord  of 
the  manor  wider  commercial  privileges,  such  as  grants  of 
coinage,  the  right  of  holding  fairs,  and  of  exemption  from 
tolls.4  Then  they  asked  for  freedom  of  justice,  and  for  the 
right  of  self-government ;  and  it  is  supposed  also  that  it  was 
possibly  the  gilds  also,  as  representing  practically  the  town 
itself,  who  bought  up  the  firma  burgi,6  and  thus  became 
their  own  assessors  of  taxes.  Finally,  no  doubt,  they  helped 
largely  in  buying  a  charter,  as  we  have  seen,  from  a  king  or 
noble  in  need  of  ready  money.  And  so,  gradually,  and  by 
other  steps  which  cannot  now  be  clearly  traced,  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  towns  was  won  by  the  gilds  ;  the  boroughs 
became  free  from  their  lords'  restrictions  and  dues ;  till  by 
the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  chartered  towns,  which  were 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  417.  8  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  xi.  p.  417. 

*  Ashley,  Economic  Hist.,  II.  i.  26. 

4  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ix.  p.  425.  8  /&.,  p.  416, 


94  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

very  few  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest,  became  the  general 
rule.  In  later  times,  again,  the  power  of  the  gilds  passed 
to  the  town  corporations.1  Yet  at  no  time  can  we  say 
that  the  governing  body  of  the  town  was  identical  in  idea 
with  the  merchant  gild.2  It  is  true  that  in  time  member- 
ship of  some  gild  became  indispensable  to  the  status  of  a 
burgher,3  but  still  the  gild  was  theoretically  distinct  from 
the  municipal  body,  though  practically  it  was  generally  one 
and  the  same.  The  chief  result  of  the  gilds  and  of  gild- 
life  was  to  produce  greater  unity  and  cohesion  among  the 
townsmen,4  and  thus  to  awake  in  them  the  idea  of  the  cor- 
porate unity  of  municipal  life. 

§  55.   How  the  Craft  Gilds  helped  Industry. 

So  far  we  have  specially  noted  the  work  of  the  merchant 
gilds,  which,  as  it  were,  built  up  the  constitution  and  free- 
dom of  the  towns.  But  the  craft  gilds  did  similar  work 
also.  Originally,  it  is  true,  the  merchant  gilds  reckoned 
themselves  above  the  craft  gilds ;  but  in  later  times  the 
two  classes  came,  so  to  speak,  to  stand  more  side  by  side5; 
and  each  class  of  gild  occupied  the  same  relation  to  the 
municipal  government,  though  very  often  the  members  of 
each  might  vary  greatly  in  wealth  or  position  6 — from  the 
poor  cobbler,  who  was  yet  a  member  of  the  shoemakers'  gild, 
to  the  rich  merchant  of  drapery,  who  might  have  held  the 
highest  municipal  honours. 

We  must  now  look  for  a  moment  at  the  work  of  the 
artisans'  gilds,  or  craft  gilds,  which  afterwards  became  very 
important.7  These  are  found  not  only  in  London  but  in 
provincial  towns.  The  London  weavers  are  mentioned  as 
a  craft  gild  in  the  time  of  Henry  I.  (1100  A.D.),8  and  most 
of  these  gilds  seemed  to  have  existed  already  for  a  long 
period.  The  Goldsmiths'  Gild  claimed  to  have  possessed 
land  before  the  Norman  Conquest,  and  it  was  fairly  power- 
ful in  the  days  of  Henry  II.  (1180  A.D.),  for  he  found  it 

1  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist. ,  n.  i. ,  p.  13. 

a  Stubbs,  ut  supra,  p.  418.  3  76.,  p.  425.  *  76.,  p.  425. 

8  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  H.  i.  p.  24.  6  Ib.,  p.  25. 

7  They  were,  perhaps,  more  often  known  as  "crafts,"  " misteries,"  or 
•"companies."  8  Cunningham,  English  Industry  (1882),  132. 


THE  TOWNS  AND  THE  GILDS  95 

convenient  to  try  and  suppress  it.1  But  it  did  not  receive 
the  public  recognition  of  a  charter  till  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury. They  arose,  of  course,  first  in  the  towns,  and  origin- 
ally seem  to  have  consisted  of  a  small  body  of  the  leading 
men  of  a  particular  craft,  to  whom  was  confided  the  regula- 
tion of  a  particular  industry,  probably  as  soon  as  that 
industry  was  thought  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  regulated. 
In  the  fifteenth  century  they  became  so  universal  that  every 
trade  which  occupied  as  many  as  twenty  men  in  a  town  had 
a  gild  of  its  own.2  The  gild  tried  to  secure  good  work  on 
the  part  of  its  members,3  and  attempted  to  suppress  the 
production  of  wares  by  irresponsible  persons  who  were  not 
members  of  the  craft.4  Their  fundamental  principle  was, 
that  a  member  should  work  not  only  for  his  own  private 
advantage  but  for  the  reputation  and  good  of  his  trade — 
"  for  the  honour  of  the  good  folks  of  such  misteries." 6 
Hence  bad  work  was  punished,  and  it  is  curious  to  note 
that  night-work  was  prohibited  as  leading  to  poor  work.8 
The  gild  also  took  care  to  secure  a  supply  of  competent 
workmen  for  the  future  (and  at  the  same  time  to  restrain 
competition)  by  training  a  limited  number  of  young  people 
in  its  particular  industry.  Hence  arose  the  system  of  each 
"  master  "  having  apprentices  ;  and  though  in  earlier  times  it 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  necessary  that  a  person  must 
pass  through  an  apprenticeship  before  being  admitted  a 
member  of  a  craft  or  mistery,  in  later  days  this  rule  was 
rigidly  enforced.7  The  gild,  moreover,  exercised  some  kind 
of  moral  control  over  its  members,  and  secured  their  good 
behaviour,  thus  forming  an  effective  branch  of  the  social 
police.8  On  the  other  hand,  it  had  many  of  the  character- 
istics of  a  benefit  society,  providing  against  sickness  and 
death  among  those  belonging  to  it,  as  indeed  all  gilds  did.9 
At  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  it  is  noticeable  that 

1  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  I.  ii.  81.  2  Ashley,  ut  supra,  II.  ii.  p.  74. 

3  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  ii.  p.  72.  4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  107. 

8  See  the  Royal  Order  of  Edward  in.,  quoted  by  Bain,  Merchant  ami 
Craft  Gilds,  p.  40. 

8  Cunningham,  i.  p.  314.  7  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  ii.  p.  84. 

*  Ochenkowski,  England's  Wirthschaftl.  Entwickeluny,  p.  66. 
8  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  110,  347. 


96  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  custom  was  growing  of  erecting  special  "houses"  or 
"  halls  "  for  the  gilds,  these  buildings  being  duly  provided 
with  the  social  and  religious  appurtenances  of  kitchen, 
chapel,  and  often  also  almshouses.1 

These  institutions,  however,  did  not  apparently  only 
belong  to  the  towns,  but  were  found  in  country  districts 
also ;  thus  we  hear  of  the  carpenters'  and  masons'  rural 
gilds  in  the  reign  of  Edward  III.2  Even  the  peasant 
labourers,  according  to  Professor  Thorold  Rogers,3  possessed 
these  associations,  which  in  all  cases  served  many  of  the 
functions  of  the  modern  trade  unions.  Later  on  (1381)  we 
shall  come  to  a  very  remarkable  instance  of  the  power  of 
these  peasants'  unions  in  the  matter  of  Tyler's  rebellion. 

§  56.  Life  in  the  Towns  of  this  time. 

The  inhabitants  of  the  towns  were  of  all  classes  of  society. 
There  was  the  noble  who  held  the  castle,  or  the  abbot  and 
monks  in  the  monastery,  with  their  retainers  and  personal 
dependants  ;  there  were  the  busy  merchants,  active  both  in 
the  management  of  their  trade  and  of  civic  affairs ;  and 
there  were  artisans  and  master  workmen  in  different  crafts. 
There  were  free  tenants,  or  tenants  in  socage,  including  all 
the  burgesses,  or  burgage-tenants,  as  they  were  called ;  and 
there  was  the  lower  class  of  villeins,  who,  however,  always 
tended  to  rise  into  free  men  as  they  were  admitted  into  the 
gilds.  To  and  fro  went  our  forefathers  in  the  quiet,  quaint, 
narrow  streets,  or  worked  at  some  handicraft  in  their  houses, 
or  exposed  their  goods  round  the  market  cross.  And  in 
those  old  streets  and  houses,  in  the  town-mead  and  market- 
place, as  a  picturesque  historian  says,4  amid  the  murmur  of 
the  mill  beside  the  stream,  and  the  notes  of  the  bell  that 
sounded  its  summons  to  the  crowded  assembly  of  the  town- 
mote,  in  merchant-gild  and  craft-gild  was  growing  up  that 

1  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist. ,  II.  ii.  82.     It  is  also  worth  noting,  as  illustrating 
the  close  connection  between  the  gilds  arid  municipal  life,  that  at  Notting- 
ham the  Town  Hall  is  still  called  the  "Guild  Hall." 

2  This  may  be  inferred  from  Rogers,  ut  supra,  pp.  236  and  237. 

8  lb.,  p.  252.     See  also  his  Econ.  Interpret,  of  History,  p.  306,  on  Village 
Guilds. 
4  Green,  History,  i.  212. 


THE  TOWNS  AND  THE  GILDS  97 

sturdy  industrial  life,  unheeded  and  unnoticed  by  knight  or 
baron,  that  silently  and  surely  was  building  up  the  slow 
structure  of  England's  wealth  and  freedom.  This  life  was 
fostered  by  the  idea  of  unity  which  possessed  the  townspeople 
of  that  day  quite  as  much  as  it  does  those  of  our  own  time  ; 
and  this  unity  was  promoted  not  only  by  the  gilds  but  by 
the  possession  of  town  property  in  common  by  the  towns- 
men,1 in  the  shape  of  those  common  fields  and  pastures  that 
were  the  relics  of  the  time  when  the  town  was  merely  a 
village  settlement.2  In  later  times  we  find  the  townsmen 
undertaking  common  enterprises,  such  as  the  proper  pro- 
vision of  corn  or  water  for  the  citizens.3  The  decay  of 
municipal  life,  however,  begins  to  date  from  the  sixteenth 
century  (or  about  that  period),  when  commerce  and  trade 
were  becoming  more  and  more  national  and  less  local  in 
character,  and  consequently  national  regulations  of  a  more 
far-reaching  character  were  required.  But,  long  before 
municipal  or  even  gild  life  began  to  decay,  it  had  done  a 
very  important  work.  It  had  caused  a  radical  change  in 
social  and  political  relationships,  by  its  recognition  of 
persons  as  standing  for  themselves  and  not  tied  to  the  land 
or  depending  on  a  superior  lord.  The  association  of  persons 
as  persons  had  taken  the  place  of  the  feudal  association 
which  was  based  only  on  land.4  Land  was  now  no  longer 
the  basis  of  everything:  a  new  social  and  economic  force 
had  appeared,  and  slowly  but  surely  feudalism  began  to 
give  way  before  it. 

1  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  i.  36.  a  Above,  p.  86,  and  c/.  p.  48. 

3  More  frequently  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.      Ashley, 
ut  supra,  p.  36. 
*  Cf.  Maurer,  Stadteverfassung,  iii.  725. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MANUFACTURES   AND    TRADE  :    ELEVENTH   TO  THIRTEENTH 
CENTURIES 

§  57.  Economic  Effects  of  the  Feudal  System. 

WE  shall  find  that,  for  some  time  after  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, English  industry  does  not  develope  very  rapidly,  and 
that  for  obvious  reasons.  The  feud  that  existed  between 
Norman  and  Saxon — although,  perhaps,  partially  allayed 
by  Henry  I.'s  marriage  to  an  English  wife  l — and  the  social 
disorder  that  accompanied  this  feeling,  hardly  tended  to 
that  quiet  and  security  that  are  necessary  for  a  healthy 
industrial  life.  The  frightful  disorders  that  occurred  during 
the  fierce  struggle  for  the  kingdom  between  Stephen  of 
Blois  and  the  Empress  Maud,  and  the  equally  frightful 
ravages  and  extortions  of  their  contending  barons,  must 
have  been  serious  drawbacks  to  any  progress.  As  the  old 
annalist  remarks — "  They  fought  among  themselves  with 
deadly  hatred  ;  they  spoiled  the  fairest  lands  with  fire  and 
rapine ;  in  what  had  been  the  most  fertile  of  counties  they 
destroyed  almost  all  the  provision  of  bread."  2  But  this  ter- 
rible struggle  fortunately  ended  in  ruining  many  of  the 
barons  who  took  part  in  it,  and  in  the  desirable  destruction 
of  most  of  their  abodes  of  plunder.  The  accession  of 
Henry  II.  (1154)  marks  a  period  of  amalgamation  between 
Englishmen  and  Normans,  not  only  in  social  life,  but  in 
commercial  traffic  and  intercourse.8 

But  even  when  we  come  to  look  at  the  feudal  system  in 
a  time  of  peace,  we  see  that  it  did  not  tend  to  any  great 
growth  of  industry.  It  certainly  gave,  under  a  strong 
ruler4  (but  only  then)  some  security  for  person  and  pro- 

1  The  reign  of  Henry  I.,  however,  was  on  the  whole  peaceful.  "  He  was 
a  good  man,  and  great  was  the  awe  of  him  :  he  made  peace  for  man  and 
deer." — English  Chron.  (Bohn),  1135.  2  Quoted  by  Green,  History,  i.  155. 

3  Green,  History,  i.  161  4  Cunningham,  i.  131. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  TRADE  99 

perty,  but  it  encouraged  rather  than  diminished  that  spirit 
of  isolation  and  self-sufficiency  which  was  so  marked  a 
feature l  of  the  earlier  manors  and  townships.  In  these 
communities,  again,  little  scope  was  afforded  to  individual 
enterprise,  from  the  fact  that  the  consent  of  the  lord  of  a 
manor  or  town  was  often  necessary  for  the  most  ordinary 
purposes  of  industrial  life.2  It  is  true,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  when  the  noble  owner  was  in  pecuniary  difficulties 
the  towns  profited  thereby  to  obtain  their  charters ;  and 
perhaps  we  may  not  find  it  altogether  a  matter  for 
regret  that  the  barons,  through  their  internecine  struggles, 
thus  unwittingly  helped  on  the  industry  of  the  land.  It 
may  be  admitted  also,  that  though  the  isolation  of  com- 
munities consequent  upon  the  prevalent  manorial  system 
did  not  encourage  trade  and  traffic  between  separate  com- 
munities, it  yet  tended  to  diffuse  a  knowledge  of  domestic 
manufactures  throughout  the  land  generally,  because  each 
place  had  largely  to  provide  for  itself. 

The  constant  taxation,3  however,  entailed  by  the  feudal 
system,  in  the  shape  of  tallages,  aids,  and  fines,  both  to  king 
and  nobles,  made  it  difficult  for  the  lower  classes  to  accumu- 
late capital,  more  especially  as  in  the  civil  wars  they  were 
constantly  plundered  of  it  openly.  The  upper  classes  merely 
squandered  it  in  fighting.  Agriculture  suffered  similarly, 
for  the  villeins,  however  well  off,  were  bound  to  the  land,4 
especially  in  the  earlier  period  soon  after  the  Conquest,  and 
before  commutation  of  services  for  money  rents  became  so 
common  as  it  did  subsequently  ;  nor  could  they  leave  their 
manor  5  without  incurring  a  distinct  loss,  both  of  social  status, 
and,  what  is  more  important,  of  the  means  of  livelihood. 
The  systems  of  constant  services  to  the  lord  of  the  manor, 
and  of  the  collective  methods  of  cultivation,  were  also 
drawbacks  to  good  agriculture.6  Again,  in  trade,  prices 

1  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.  History,  p.  283. 

a  Cf.  the  Court  Leet  Records  of  Manchester  (pub.   1884),  and  Pearson, 
Hist,  of  England,  i.  594. 

8  On  taxation,  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  xiii.  pp.  576-586. 

4  On  the  other  hand  this  had  its  advantages  as  giving  the  agriculturist 
security  of  tenure  (</.  Bracton,  De  Leg.,  ch.  viii./.  246;  Vol.  I.  p.  198-209 
(ed.  Twiss). 
5  Except  on  payment  of  a  fine  :  cf.  p.  151,  below.      '  Cunningham,  i.  132. 


ioo  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

were  settled  by  authority,  competition  was  checked,1  while 
merchants  had  to  pay  heavy  duties  to  the  king,  and 
were  very  much  at  the  mercy  of  the  royal  officials.2 

§  58.  Foreign  Trade.      The  Crusades. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Norman  Conquest,  which 
combined  the  Kingdom  of  England  with  the  Duchy  of 
Normandy  in  close  political  relations,  gave  abundant  oppor- 
tunities for  commerce,  both  with  France  and  the  Continent, 
and  foreign  trade  certainly  received  a  stimulus  from  this 
fact.  It  was  further  developed  by  the  Crusades.  The 
most  obvious  effect  of  these  remarkable  expeditions  for  a 
visionary  success  was  the  opening  up  of  trade  routes 
throughout  Europe  to  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea, 
and  to  the  East  in  general.3  They  produced  also  a  con- 
siderable redistribution  of  wealth  in  England  itself,  for  the 
knights  and  nobles  that  set  out  for  the  Holy  Land  often 
mortgaged  their  lands  and  never  redeemed  them,  or  they 
perished,  and  their  lands  lapsed  to  the  crown  or  to  some  mon- 
astery that  took  the  place  of  a  trustee  for  the  absent  owner.4 

As  to  foreign  trade,  our  chief  authority  at  this  time  is 
the  old  chronicler,  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  whose  history  was 
published  about  1155  A.D.5  Like  most  historians,  even  of 
the  present  day,  he  says  very  little  about  so  insignificant  a 
matter  as  trade,  but  the  single  sentence  which  he  devotes 
to  it  is  probably  of  as  great  value  as  any  other  part  of  his 
book.  From  it  we  gather  that  our  trade  with  Germany  was 
extensive,  and  that  we  exported  lead  and  tin  among  the 
metals ;  6  fish  and  meat  and  fat  cattle  (which  seems  to  point 
to  some  improvement  in  our  pastoral  economy) ;  and,  most 
important  of  all,  "  most  precious  wool,"  though  at  that  time 
the  English  could  not  weave  it  properly  for  themselves.  Our 

1  Cunningham,  i.  p.  230.  2Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  i.  p.  522. 

8  The  Crusades  opened  up  routes  rather  than   followed  those   already 
existing ;  <•/.  Gibbon,  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  Iviii. 

4  Of.  Gibbon,  ut  supra. 

5  Quoted  by  Craik,  Hist,  of  Brit.  Commerce,  i.  105. 

6  It  appears  from  other  authorities  also  that  the  export  of  these  two 
metals  must  have  been  large.     "The  roofs  of  the  principal  churches, 
palaces,  and  castles  in  all  parts  of  Europe  are  said  to  have  been  covered 
with  English  lead."    Craik,  ut  supra,  i.  105. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  TRADE  101 

imports,  however,  were  very  limited,  comprising  none  of  the 
necessaries  of  life,  and  few  of  its  luxuries  beyond  silver  and 
foreign  furs.  Other  imports  were  fine  woven  cloths,  used 
for  the  dresses  of  the  nobility  ;  and,  after  the  Crusades 
began,  of  rich  Eastern  stuffs  and  spices,  which  were  in  great 
demand,  and  commanded  a  high  price.  So,  too,  did  iron, 
which  was  necessary  for  agricultural  purposes,  as  Englishmen 
had  not  yet  discovered  their  rich  stores  of  this  metal,  but 
had  to  get  it  from  Spain  and  the  lands  on  the  Baltic  shore.1 
Generally  speaking,  we  may  say  that  our  imports  consisted 
of  articles  of  greater  intrinsic  value  and  scarcity  than  our 
exports,  and  thus  were  fewer  in  number,  though  there  must 
have  been  some  balance  to  be  paid  in  coin  or  bullion.  But 
this  balance  must  have  been  comparatively  small,  as  coined 
money,  though,  of  course,  no  longer  a  rarity,  was  by  no 
means  plentiful,  and  was  very  precious.  The  German 
merchants  certainly  paid  for  English  wool  in  silver.2 

§  59.   The  Trading  Clauses  in  the  Great  Charter. 

One  great  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  fair  amount  of 
foreign  trade  is  seen  in  the  clauses  which  were  inserted  in 
the  Great  Charter  (1215),  by  the  influence  of  the  trading 
class.  One  enactment  secures  to  foreign  merchants  free- 
dom of  journeying  and  of  trade  throughout  the  realm,8  and 
another  orders  an  uniformity  of  weights  and  measures 4 
to  be  enforced  over  the  whole  kingdom.  The  growth 
of  town  life  is  seen  in  the  enactment  which  secures  to  the 
towns  the  enjoyment  of  their  municipal  privileges,  their  free- 
dom from  arbitrary  taxation,  and  the  regulation  of  their 
own  trade.5  The  amercement  of  a  freeman,  even  upon  con- 
viction of  felony,  was  never  to  include  bis  contenement ; 
nor  his  wares,  if  he  were  a  merchant,  nor  his  wainage  if  a 
villein.6  The  exaction  of  forced  labour  or  of  provisions  and 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  88  and  151. 

2  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  ut  supra. 

3  John  had  already  promised  this  at  the  commencement  of  hia  reign. 
M  ait  land,  Hint,  of  London,  i.  73-75.     It  was  again  laid  down  in  Clause  41 
of  the  Charter. 

4  Magna  Carta,  §  35.     This  had  already  been  enjoined  in  an  Assize  of 
Richard  I.,  and  again  by  that  King  in  1194  (Hoveden,  iii.  263  ;  iv.  33). 

8  Magna  Carta,  §  13.  •  Magna  Carta,  §  20. 


102  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

chattels  without  payment  by  the  royal  officers  was  also  for- 
bidden,1 and  this  must  have  been  a  great  boon  to  the  agricul- 
tural population.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  very  noticeable 
that  the  royal  officers  are  not  to  take  money  in  lieu  of 
military  service  from  those  who  are  willing  to  perform  the 
service  in  person,2  a  regulation  which  shows  that  commutation 
for  services,  military  and  otherwise,  was  now  very  common. 
The  general  tone  of  those  clauses  of  the  Great  Charter 
which  deal  with  merchants,  or  with  commerce  and  industry, 
is  certainly  remarkable  in  an  age  when,  on  the  Continent 
of  Europe  at  least,  the  merchant  and  his  calling  were 
generally  despised  by  the  "  upper  classes  "  ;  and  it  is  not  a 
little  to  the  credit  of  the  English  nobility  of  that  day  that 
they  recognised  the  value  of  commerce  and  industry  to  the 
nation,  and  gave  them  special  attention  in  the  agreement 
which  they  forced  upon  King  John.  Their  conduct  showed 
both  breadth  and  liberality,  as  compared  with  that  of  their 
Continental  fellow -peers,  who  throughout  Europe  were 
accustomed  to  oppress  and  pillage  the  trader ; 3  nor  is  it 
the  less  creditable  because  it  was  actuated  by  a  spirit 
of  enlightened  self-interest.  The  merchant  class  was  now 
becoming  a  power  in  the  land,  and  as  such  was  worth 
recognising,  even  by  the  nobility ;  and  probably  some  indi- 
vidual merchants  of  influence  took  care  that  the  interests 
of  their  class  were  not  neglected  in  the  Charter  of  the 
nation. 

1  Magna  Carta,  §§  28,  30,  31,  23.    These  clauses  raise  the  whole  question 
of  "  purveyance,"  i.e.,  the  prerogative  enjoyed  by  the  crown  of  buying  up 
provisions  and  other  necessaries  for  the  use  of  the  royal  household  at  an 
appraised  valuation,  and  even  without  the  consent  of  the  owner ;  also  of 
forcibly  impressing  the  carriages  and  horses  of  a  subject  to  do  the  King's 
business  upon  a  public   road   on   paying  a  fixed   price.      The  abuses  to 
which  this  prerogative  gave  rise  were,  of  course,  many  and  various,  nor 
was  the  evil  completely  suppressed  till  the  prerogative  was  formally  re- 
signed by  Charles  II.     The  prerogative  was  extended  to  men's  labour  as 
well  as  their  goods.     Thus  Edward  III.  granted  a  commission  to  William 
of  Walsingham  to  impress  painters  for  the  works  at  St  Stephen's  Chapel, 
Westminster,  "  to  be  at  our  wages  as  long  as  shall  be  necessary,"  and  all 
such  as  refused  were  to  be  imprisoned  by  the  Sheriff.    Edward  IV.  granted 
a  similar  impressment  of  workers  in  gold  for  the  royal  household.    Rymer, 
t.  vi.  417 ;  t.  xi.  852 ;  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  iii.  149 ;  Taswell-Langmead, 
Const.  Hist.,  p.  132. 

2  Magna  Carta,  §  29.  3  Taswell-Lan^mead,  Const.  Hist.,  p.  132. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  TRADE  103 

§  60.   The  Jews  in  England. 

Among  the  mercantile  community,  moreover,  there  was 
a  distinct  class  which  also  has  special  recognition  in  the 
Charter,  for  we  find  clauses x  which  endeavour  to  restrict 
usury  as  exacted  by  the  Jews — a  fact  which,  while  point- 
ing to  a  not  unfamiliar  aspect  of  the  Hebrew  race,  also 
shows  their  growing  importance  as  an  economic  factor  in 
mediaeval  England.  We  will,  therefore,  briefly  mention 
the  facts  concerning  them  at  this  period. 

The  first  appearance  of  the  Jews  in  England  may  practi- 
cally be  reckoned  as  occurring  at  the  time  of  the  Norman 
Conquest,  for  immediately  after  106G  they  came  in  large 
numbers  from  Rouen,  Caen,  and  other  Norman  towns.2 
They  stood  in  the  peculiar  position  of  being  the  personal 
property,  or  "  chattels,"  of  the  King,3  and  a  special  officer 
governed  their  settlements  in  various  towns.  These  settle- 
ments were  called  Jewries,  of  which  those  at  London,  Lin- 
coln, Bury  St  Edmunds,  and  Oxford  were  at  one  time  fairly 
considerable.4  They  were  protected  by  the  King  (for,  being 
royal  "  chattels,"  no  one  dared  interfere  with  them),  and,  of 
course,  paid  him  for  their  protection.  Their  general  financial 
skill  was  acknowledged  by  all,  and  William  II.  employed 
them  to  farm  the  revenues  of  vacant  sees,  while  barons 
often  employed  them  as  stewards  of  their  estates.  They 
were  also  the  leading,  if  not  the  only,  capitalists  of  that 
time,5  and  must  have  assisted  merchants  considerably  in 
their  enterprises,  though  only  upon  a  heavy  commission.6 
After  the  death  of  Henry  I.,  the  security  which  they  had 
enjoyed  was  much  weakened,  in  proportion  as  the  royal 
power  declined  in  the  civil  wars,  and  in  the  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  centuries  they  were  in  a  precarious  position. 
Stephen  and  Matilda  openly  robbed  them,  Henry  II.  (in 
1187)  demanded  one-fourth  of  their  chattels,  and  Richard  I. 

1  Magna  Carta,  §§  10  and  11. 

1  Craik,  Hist.  British  Commerce,  i.  p.  94 ;  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade, 
p.  9. 

3  Cunningham,  i.  p.  145.  4  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  10. 

8  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  95. 

8  The  rate  seems  to  have  been  40  per  cent.  Cf.  Anglo-Jewish  Exhibition 
Papers,  207. 


104  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

obtained  large  sums  from  them  for  his  crusading  extrava- 
gances. From  1144  to  1189  riots  directed  against  them 
became  common,  and  the  Jewries  of  many  towns  were 
pillaged.  In  1194  Richard  I.  placed  their  commercial 
transactions  more  thoroughly  under  local  officers  of  the 
crown.  John  exploited  them  to  great  advantage,  and  levied 
heavy  tallages  upon  them,  and  Henry  III.  did  very  much 
the  same.  They  were  expelled 1  from  the  kingdom  in  1290, 
and  before  this  had  greatly  sunk  from  their  previous  position 
as  the  financiers  of  the  crown  to  that  of  petty  money-lenders 
to  the  poor  at  gross  usury.  What  concerns  us  more  im- 
mediately to  notice  in  this  early  period  of  English  history 
is  their  temporary  usefulness  as  capitalists  in  trading  trans- 
actions at  a  time  when  capital  was  not  easily  accumulated 
or  kept  in  safety,  and  as  a  body  from  whom  the  crown 
could  obtain  money  in  times  of  need  without  appealing  to  the 
nation  at  large.  Their  expulsion  seems  to  have  been  due 
to  an  outbreak  of  fanaticism  of  more  than  usual  virulence. 

§  61.  Manufactures  in  this  Period :  Flemish  Weavers. 

We  now  turn  from  the  subject  of  trade  and  finance  to 
that  of  manufacturing  industry.  On  doing  so,  we  find  that 
the  chief  industry  is  that  of  weaving  coarse  woollen  cloth. 
An  industry  so  necessary  as  this,  and  one,  too,  that  can  be 
carried  on  in  a  simple  state  of  society  with  such  ease  as  a 
domestic  manufacture,  would  naturally  always  exist,  even 
from  the  most  uncivilised  times.  This,  as  we  saw  above,2 
had  been  the  case  in  England.  But  it  is  noticeable  that, 
although  Henry  of  Huntingdon  mentions  the  export  of  "  fine 

1  It  appears  that  this  expulsion  of  the  Jews  was  not  absolutely  com- 
plete, and  Jewish  tradition  gives  the  year  1358  as  the  date  of  final  expul- 
sion ;  but  in  1410  a  Jewish  physician,  Elias  Sabot,  was  certainly  allowed 
to  practise  in  England.  There  seems  to  have  been  a  certain  immigra- 
tion of  Jews  to  England  when  they  were  expelled  from  Spain  by  Ferdi- 
nand and  Isabella  (1492),  for  there  are  notices  of  them  recovering  debts  in 
English  law  courts.  Their  presence  in  this  country  was,  however,  only 
first  publicly  sanctioned  by  Cromwell ;  and  during  the  Commonwealth  and 
the  reign  of  Charles  II.  they  came  back  here  in  considerable  numbers.  Cf. 
Wolf's  Anglo- Jewish  Exhibition  Papers,  p.  57 ;  and  my  own  History  of 
Commerce  in  Europe,  p.  99 ;  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  p.  129 ;  Cunning- 
ham, Eng.  Ind.,  i.  pp.  266,  267. 

1  Pp.  6  and  8,  above. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  TRADE  105 

wool"  as  one  of  the  chief  English  exports,  and  although 
England  had  always  been  in  a  specially  favourable  position 
for  growing  wool,  her  manufacture  of  it  had  not  developed 
to  any  great  extent.  Nevertheless  it  was  practised  as  a 
domestic  industry  in  every  rural  and  urban  community, 
and  at  this  period  already  had  its  gilds — a  sure  sign  of 
growth.  Indeed,  one  of  the  oldest  craft  gilds  was  that 
of  the  London  weavers,1  of  which  we  find  mention  in  the 
time  of  Henry  I.  In  this  reign,  too,  we  first  hear  of  the 
arrival  of  Flemish  immigrants  in  this  country,  who  helped 
largely  both  then  and  subsequently  in  the  development  of 
the  woollen  manufacture.  Some  Flemings  had  come  over 
indeed  in  the  days  of  William  the  Norman,  having  been 
driven  from  Flanders  by  an  incursion  of  the  sea,  and  had 
settled  at  Carlisle.  But  Henry  I.,  as  we  read  in  Higden's 
Chronicle,  transferred  them  to  Pembrokeshire  in  1111  A.D.  : 
"  Flandrenses,  tempore  regis  Henrici  primi,  ad  occidentalem 
Walliae  partem,  apud  Haverford,  sunt  translati."  2  Traces 
of  them  remained  till  a  comparatively  recent  period,3  and 
the  names  of  the  village  of  Flemingston,  and  of  the  road 
called  the  Via  Flandrica,  running  over  the  crest  of  the 
Precelly  mountains,  afford  striking  evidence  of  their  settle- 
ment there,  as  also  does  the  name  Tucking  Mill  (i.e.,  cloth- 
making  mill,  from  German  and  Flemish  tuch,  "  a  cloth  ").4 
Norfolk  also  had  from  early  times  been  the  seat  of  the 
woollen  industry,  and  had  had  similar  influxes  of  Flemish 
weavers.  Their  immigration  does  not,  however,  become  im- 
portant till  the  reign  of  Edward  III.,  when  we  shall  find  that 
English  cloth  manufacture  begins  to  develop  considerably.6 
In  this  period,  all  we  can  say  is  that  England  was  more 
famed  for  the  wool  that  it  grew  than  for  the  cloth  which 
it  manufactured  therefrom,  and  it  had  yet  to  learn  most 
of  its  improvements  from  lessons  taught  by  foreigners. 
Indeed,  some  have  gone  so  far  as  to  state  that  weaving 
as  a  regular  craft  was  first  introduced  into  England  by 

1  Cunningham,  i.  p.  181.        2  Higden,  in  Gale,  Scriptores,  VoL  HI.  p.  210. 

»  Cf.  Holinshed's  Chronicle,  1107.         *  Taylor,  Words  and  Places,  p.  186. 

8  Burnley  (Hist,  of  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  60)  says  the  distinction 
between  woollen  and  worsted  industry  cannot  be  traced  with  certainty 
before  the  Flemish  immigration,  though  it  probably  existed  in  Saxon  times. 


106  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

foreigners  at  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest,1  and  that 
the  origin  of  craft  gilds  is  to  be  found  in  the  need  for  com- 
bination to  protect  each  other  that  was  felt  by  these  foreign 
artisans  when  they  first  settled  here.2  But  while  certain 
points,  in  the  history  of  weavers  especially,  tend  to  confirm 
this  view,  it  seems  unlikely  that  there  were  no  gilds  formed 
by  Englishmen  themselves  prior  to  foreign  settlement, 
although  we  may  readily  admit  that  it  is  largely  to  foreigners, 
and  especially  to  the  Flemish,  that  England  owes  its  early 
progress  in  the  making  of  cloth.  It  is  noticeable  also 
that  Domesday  Book  gives  evidence  of  a  considerable 
number  of  artisans  of  French  or  other  foreign  extraction 
living  in  England  at  the  time  of  the  Conquest.3 

§62.  Economic  Appearance  of  England  in  this  Period. 
Population. 

The  England  of  the  Domesday  Book  was  very  different 
from  anything  which  we  can  now  conceive,  nor  did  its 
industrial  condition  change  much  during  the  next  century 
or  two.  The  population  was  probably  under  2,000,000 
in  all;  for  we  saw  that  in  Domesday  Book  only  283,242 
able-bodied  men  are  enumerated.  These,  multiplied  by  five, 
to  include  women  and  children,  give  1,400,000  of  general 
population,  and  allowing  for  omissions,  we  shall  find  two 
millions  rather  over  than  under  the  mark.4  Nor,  indeed, 
could  the  agricultural  and  industrial  state  of  the  country 
have  supported  more.5  This  population  was  chiefly  located 
in  the  southern  and  eastern  counties,6  which  were  also 
politically  and  socially  by  far  the  most  important,  for  the 
north  of  England,  and  especially  Yorkshire,  had  been  laid 
waste  by  the  Conqueror  in  consequence  of  its  revolt  in 
1068.  The  whole  country  between  York  and  the  Tees 
was  ravaged,  and  the  famine  which  ensued  is  said  to  have 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  179,   180  (but  cf.  Ashley,  Econ. 
Hist.,  i.  83).  2/6. 

3  E.g.,   at  Shrewsbury,  Domesday,  i.  252  a,  1,  Gretford,  i.   268  a,  1, 
Cambridge,  i.  189  a,  1. 

4  A  calculation  three  centuries  later,  based  on  the  assessment  for  the  poll- 
tax  of  1377,  gives  2^  millions  (Topham,  in  Archceologia,  vii.  337). 

5  Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  119. 

6  See  the  map  in  Freeman's  Norman  Conquest,  iv.  p.  101. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  TRADE  107 

carried  off  100,000  victims.  Indeed,  for  half  a  century 
the  land  "  lay  bare  of  cultivation  and  of  men "  for  sixty 
miles  northward  of  York,  and  for  centuries  more  never  fully 
recovered  from  this  terrible  visitation.1  The  Domesday  Book 
records  district  after  district  and  manor  after  manor  in 
Yorkshire  as  "  waste." 2  In  the  North-west  of  England, 
now  the  most  densely  populated  part  of  the  country,  and  in 
the  East,  all  was  fen,  moorland,  and  forest,  peopled  only  by 
wild  animals  and  lawless  men.3  Till  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, in  fact,  Lancashire  and  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire 
were  the  poorest  counties  in  England ; 4  and  the  fens  of 
East  Anglia  were  only  reclaimed  in  1634.  The  main  ports 
were  London  for  general  trade  ; 6  Southampton,  for  the 
French  trade  in  wines ;  Norwich,  for  the  export  wool  trade 
with  Flanders,  and  for  imports  from  the  Baltic  ;  and  on 
the  west  coast  Bristol,  which  had  always  been  the  centre 
for  the  western  trade  in  Severn  salmon  and  hides.6  At 
one  time,  too,  it  was  the  great  port  for  the  trade  of  English 
slaves  who  were  taken  to  Ireland,  but  William  the  Norman 
checked  that  traffic,7  though  it  lingered  till  Henry  II. 
conquered  Ireland.  For  internal  trade,  market  towns,  or 
villages,  as  we  should  call  them,  were  gradually  springing 
up.  They  were  nearly  always  held  in  demesne  by  the  lord 
of  the  manor,  who  claimed  the  tolls,  though  in  after  years 
the  town  bought  them  of  him.8  Some  of  these  markets 
had  existed  from  Saxon  times,  as  is  seen  by  the  prefix 
"Chipping"  (  =  chepinge,  A.S.  a  market),  as  in  Chipping 
Norton,  Chippingham,  and  Chepstowe ;  others  date  from  a 
later  period,  and  are  known  by  the  prefix  "  Market,"  as,  e.g., 
Market  Bosworth.9  But  these  market  towns  were  very 
small,  and,  indeed,  only  some  half-dozen  towns  in  the  king- 
dom had  a  population  above  5000  inhabitants.  These 
were  London  (40,000),  York  and  Bristol  (12,000),  Coventry 
and  Plymouth  (9000),  while  Norwich,  Lincoln,  Salisbury, 

1  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  iv.  272.  2  lb.,  v.  42. 

*  Sim.  Dun.,  Gent.  Regg.,  1079,  p.  85,  Hinde. 

4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  127.  8  lb.,  pp.  122-124.  «  76. 

1  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  iv.  625. 

•  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  xi.  408. 

»  Taylor,  Words  and  Places,  pp.  394,  395  (ed.  1864). 


io8  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

Lynn,  and  Colchester  had  from  5000  to  7000  each.1  But 
nevertheless  the  settlement  made  by  the  Norman  Conquest  had 
the  effect  of  considerably  strengthening  the  growth  of  towns,* 
and  we  shall  see  more  of  their  importance  in  the  next  period. 

§  63.   General  Condition  of  the  Period. 

Speaking  generally  for  the  whole  period  after  the  Con- 
quest, we  may  say  that,  though  the  economic  condition  of 
England  was  by  no  means  unprosperous,  industrial  develop- 
ment was  necessarily  slow.  The  disputes  between  Stephen 
and  Maud,  and  the  civil  wars  of  their  partisans,  the  enor- 
mous drain  upon  the  resources  of  the  country  caused  by 
Richard  I.'s  expenses  in  carrying  on  crusades  when  he 
should  have  been  ruling  his  kingdom,  and  the  equally 
enormous  taxes  and  bribes  paid  by  the  -worthless  John  to 
the  Papal  See,  could  not  fail  seriously  to  check  national 
industry.  It  is  no  wonder  that  in  John's  reign,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century,  we  hear  of  great 
discontent  throughout  all  the  land,  of  much  misery  and 
poverty,  especially  in  the  towns,  and  of  a  general  feeling 
of  revolt.  That  miserable  monarch  was  only  saved  from 
deposition  by  his  opportune  death. 

Yet  with  all  these  evils  the  economic  condition  of  Eng- 
land, although  depressed,  was  by  no  means  absolutely 
unhealthy  ;  and  the  following  reign  (Henry  III.,  1216-72), 
with  its  comparative  peace  and  leisure,  afforded,  as  we  shall 
see,  sufficient  opportunity  to  enable  the  people  to  regain  a 
position  of  general  opulence  and  prosperity,  An  important 
change  was  coming  over  the  industrial  history  of  England 
in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  for  now  we  begin  to 
see  manufacturing  and  other  industries  arising  side  by  side 
with  agriculture  as  a  new  phenomenon,3  and  the  manufac- 
turer and  artisan  was  making  himself  felt  as  a  new  power 
by  the  side  of  baron  and  farmer.  This  time  of  quiet  pro- 
gress and  industrial  growth  forms  a  fitting  occasion  for  the 
marking  out  of  a  new  epoch. 

1  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  U.  i.  p.  11. 

2  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  v.  472. 

3  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  ii.,  p.  99. 


PERIOD  III 

FROM  THE  THIRTEENTH  TO  THE  END  OF  THE 
FIFTEENTH  CENTURY,  INCLUDING  THE 
GREAT  PLAGUE 

(1216-1600) 


CHAPTER  VIII 

AGRICULTURE   IN   MEDIAEVAL    ENGLAND 

§  64.  Introductory.     Rise  of  a  Wage-earning  Class. 

THE  long  reign  of  Henry  III.,  although  occasionally  troubled 
by  internal  dissensions  among  the  barons,  was,  upon  the 
whole,  a  prosperous  and  peaceful  time  for  the  people  in 
general,  and  more  especially  for  those  whom  historians  are 
pleased  to  call  the  lower  classes.  For  by  this  time  a 
remarkable  change  had  begun  to  affect  the  condition 
of  the  serfs  or  villeins,  a  change  already  alluded  to,  by 
which  the  villeins  became  free  tenants,  subject  to  a  fixed 
money  rent  for  their  holdings.  This  rent  was  rapidly 
becoming  a  payment  in  money  and  not  in  labour,1  for,  as 
we  saw,  the  lords  of  the  manors  were  frequently  in  want  of 
cash,  and  were  ready  to  sell  many  of  their  privileges.  The 
change  was  at  first  gradual,  but  by  the  time  of  the  Great 
Plague  (1348),  money  rents  were  becoming  the  rule  rather 
than  the  exception,  and  though  labour  rents  were  not  at 
all  obsolete,  it  was  an  ill-advised  attempt  to  insist  upon 
them  unduly  that  was  the  prime  cause  of  Wat  Tyler's 
insurrection  (1381).  Before  the  Plague,  in  fact,  villeinage 
in  the  old  sense  was  becoming  almost  extinct,  and  the 
peasants,  both  great  and  small,  had  achieved  a  large 
measure  of  freedom.  The  richer  villeins  had  developed 
into  small  farmers,  while  the  poorer  villeins,  and  especially 
the  cottars,  had  formed  a  separate  class  of  agricultural 
labourers,  not  indeed  entirely  without  land,  but  depending 
for  their  livelihood  upon  wages  paid  for  helping  to  cultivate 
the  land  of  others.  The  rise  of  this  class,  which  lived  by 
wages  and  not  by  tilling  their  own  land,  was  due  to  the 

1  The  entries  in  the  Hundred  Rolls  show  us  that  at  the  end  of  the  thir- 
teenth century  the  process  of  substituting  money  payments  for  actual  ser- 
vice had  gone  a  long  way  ;  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  218. 


H2  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

fact  that  cottars  and  others,  not  having  enough  land 
of  their  own  to  occupy  their  whole  time,  were  free  to 
hire  themselves  to  those  who  had  a  larger  quantity. 
Especially  would  they  become  labourers  at  a  fixed  wage  for 
the  lord  of  a  manor  when  he  had  commuted  his  rights  to 
the  unpaid  services  of  all  his  tenants  for  a  fixed  money 
rent.  Of  course  this  change  came  gradually,  but  its  effect 
is  seen  subsequently  in  the  difficulties  as  to  wages  expressed 
in  the  Statutes  of  Labourers,  difficulties  which  first  became 
serious  after  the  Great  Plague.  At  the  end  of  the  thirteenth 
century  we  can  trace  three  classes  of  tenants — (1)  Those 
who  had  entirely  commuted  their  services  for  a  fixed 
money  rent  ;  (2)  those  who  gave  services  or  paid  money 
according  as  their  lord  preferred  ;  and  (3)  those  who  still 
paid  entirely,  or  almost  entirely,  in  services.1 

§  65.  Agriculture  the  Chief  Occupation  of  the  People. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  this  period  the  vast  majority  of 
the  population  were  continuously  engaged  in  agricultural 
pursuits,  and  this  was  rendered  necessary  owing  to  the  very 
low  rate  of  production  consequent  upon  the  primitive 
methods  of  agriculture.  The  production  of  corn  was  only 
about  four,2  or  sometimes  eight,  bushels  per  acre,  and  this 
naturally  had  the  effect  of  keeping  down  the  population,  at 
this  time  still  only  between  1,500,000  and  2,000,000.3 
It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  even  the  inhabitants  of  the 
towns  used  at  harvest-time  to  go  out  into  the  country  to 
get  agricultural  work,  and  people  often  migrated  from  one 
district  to  another  for  the  same  purpose,4  just  as  Irish  agri- 
cultural labourers  of  to-day  are  accustomed  to  cross  over  to 
England  for  the  harvesting.  Some  attention  was  being  paid 
to  sheep  farming,  and  noticeable  progress  in  this  branch  of 
industry  took  place  later.  One  order  of  monks  in  particular, 

1  See  the  Hundred  Rolls  ;  Sot.  Hund.,  ii.  636,  ii.  324,  and  ii.  494. 
a  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  119. 

3  But  cf.  the   discussion  between  Seebohm  and  Rogers  in  Fortnightly 
Review,  II.,  III.,  IV.,  where  Seebohm  seems  to  think  5,000,000  possible  in 
1346. 

4  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  63. 


AGRICULTURE  IN  MEDIAEVAL  ENGLAND    113 

the  Cistercians,1  used  to  grow  large  quantities  of  wool  ;  and, 
indeed,  England  had  almost  a  monopoly  of  the  wool  trade  with 
Flanders  (p.  120).  But  the  great  increase  of  sheep-farming 
occurs  rather  later,  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century.2 

§66.  Methods  of  Cultivation.     The  Capitalist  Landlord 
and  his  Bailiff.      The  "  Stock  and  Land  "  Lease. 

The  agriculture  of  the  early  part  of  this  period  is  de- 
scribed to  us  by  various  writers,  of  whom  we  may  specially 
notice  three — Walter  de  Henley,  Robert  Grossteste  of 
Lincoln,  and  a  third  author  whose  name  is  unknown.  The 
most  noticeable  of  these  is  certainly  Walter  de  Henley,  whose 
treatise,  called  " La  Dite  de  Hosbanderie"  and  written  in 
French,  is  still  preserved  in  many  manuscripts.3  There  is 
little  doubt  that  he  wrote  in  the  early  part  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  and  his  treatise  remained  the  standard  work 
on  agriculture  till  the  appearance  of  Fitzherbert's  in  1523. 
The  treatise  by  Grossteste  of  Lincoln  is  called  Reules  Seynt 
Robert,  and  was  written  about  1240  A.D.,  for  the  guidance 
of  the  Countess  of  Lincoln  in  managing  her  estate  and  also 
her  household.4  It  consists  of  twenty-eight  practical 
maxims,  but  is  more  concerned  with  the  household  than 
the  farm.  The  anonymous  work,  called  Husbandry? 
seems  to  have  been  specially  written  for  landowners,  who  at 
this  period  were  beginning  to  take  care  that  the  accounts 
of  their  estates  were  presented  to  them  in  writing,  and  it 
lays  down  the  proper  methods  of  drawing  up  and  present- 
ing the  accounts,  the  receipts  and  outlay  necessary  on  an 
estate,  and  the  probable  returns  from  both  land  and  stock. 
It  has  a  special  interest,  because  it  was  in  the  reign  of 
Henry  III.  that  the  system  of  keeping  accurate  agricultural 
accounts  first  came  into  vogue,6  and  it  is  owing  to  this  fact 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  196  and  547. 

2More's  Utopia,  p.  41. 

3  E.g.,  Oxford,  Bodleian,  Douce,  98  ;  Merton,  cccxi.  ;  British  Museum, 
Add.  6159,  and  several  others.  4  Pegge,  Life  of  Grossteste,  95. 

8  Several  MSS.  exist;  e.g.,  Merton,  Oxford,  cccxxi.  ;  British  Museum, 
Add.  6159. 

'  Cunningham,  Enylish  Industry,  i.  272  ;  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  48.  Of 
course  it  is  on  these  accounts  that  Rogers'  unique  History  of  Agriculture 
and  Prices  is  based. 

H 


114  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

that  it  has  been  possible  to  gain  a  very  clear  idea  of  the 
agricultural  economy  of  England  in  the  Middle  Ages. 

If  we  look  at  a  typical  manor,  we  shall  find  that  the 
arable  land  in  it  seems  to  have  been  divided  fairly  equally 
between  the  landlord  and  the  manorial  tenants,  and  before 
the  Great  Plague  the  landlord  appears  to  have  been  not 
merely  a  rent-receiver,  but  a  capitalist  who  cultivated  his 
land  by  the  aid  of  a  bailiff,  subject  very  often  to  his  own 
personal  supervision.  Now,  the  business  of  a  manor  was 
very  elaborate,  and  required  a  great  deal  of  supervision,  and 
we  have  an  account  of  the  various  officers  on  a  large  estate 
given  in  a  small  work  called  Senescalcia.1  We  find  three 
officers  specially  mentioned — the  Seneschal,  Bailiff,  and 
"  Praepositus."  The  seneschal  was  employed  on  large 
estates,  consisting  of  many  manors,  to  visit  the  manors  in 
turn  and  see  that  the  bailiff  of  each  did  his  duty  ;  he  there- 
fore had  to  know  the  details  and  customs  of  each  estate, 
and  what  it  ought  to  produce,  in  order  that  his  lord  might 
receive  his  full  dues  from  it.  The  bailiff  was  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  lord  in  single  manors,  and  had  the  responsi- 
bility of  cultivation  of  the  soil  of  the  demesne  land  and  of 
agricultural  operations  generally  ;  while  the  "  praepositus  " 
was  the  chief  man  among  the  villeins,  and  shared  the 
responsibility  of  cultivation  with  the  bailiff,  as  representing 
the  interests  of  the  tenants.  The  bailiff  had  to  keep 
accurate  accounts  to  present  to  his  lord  or  the  seneschal, 
and  it  is  from  these  accounts,  which  were  kept  with 
wonderful  clearness,  neatness,  and  accuracy,  that  we  derive 
our  knowledge  of  the  agriculture  of  this  period. 

Tenancies  were,  of  course,  of  various  kinds,  as  we  have 
already  seen  (pp.  71,  75),  but  there  is  one  which  came  into 
vogue  about  this  time  that  specially  deserves  our  attention. 
In  many  cases,  especially  on  lands  owned  by  monasteries, 
the  land  was  held  on  the  "  stock  and  land  lease  "  system,2 
whereby  the  landlord  let  a  certain  quantity  of  stock  with 
the  land,  for  which  the  tenant,  at  the  expiration  of  his 
lease,  had  to  account  either  in  money  or  kind.  An  instance 

of  this  kind  of  lease  was  the  practice  of  the  landlord  letting 

I 
1  Cunningham,  i.  222,  2  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.  and  Prices,  i.  25, 


AGRICULTURE  IN   MEDIAEVAL  ENGLAND    115 

cows  to  dairy  farmers.1  In  mediaeval  times  the  person  to 
whom  cows  were  leased  for  dairy  purposes  was  the  deye, 
i.e.,  dairyman  or  dairymaid.2  The  stock  and  land  lease 
plan 3  was  favourable  to  the  tenant,  for  it  supplied  his 
preliminary  want  of  capital,  and  if  he  was  fortunate,  allowed 
him  often  to  make  considerable  profits,  and  even  eventually 
to  purchase  an  estate  for  himself. 

§  67.  The  Tenant's  Communal  Land  and  Closes. 

It  must  always  be  remembered,  however,  that  most  of  the 
arable  land  in  a  manor  was  "  communal,"  i.e.,  each  tenant 
held  a  certain  number  of  furrows  or  strips  in  a  common  field, 
the  separate  divisions  being  merely  marked  by  a  piece  of 
unploughed  land,  where  the  grass  was  allowed  to  grow. 
The  ownership  of  these  several  strips  was  limited  to  certain 
months  of  the  year,  generally  from  Lady  Day  to  Michaelmas, 
and  for  the  remainder  of  the  year  the  land  was  common 
pasture.  This  simple  and  rudimentary  system  was  utterly 
unsuited  to  any  advanced  agriculture.  The  tenants,  how- 
ever, also  possessed  "  closes,"  some  for  corn,  others  for 
pasture  and  hay.  The  rent  of  a  close  was  always  higher 
than  that  of  communal  land,  being  eightpence  instead  of 
sixpence  per  acre,  which  seems  to  have  been  the  usual 
annual  charge.4  Besides  the  communal  arable  land  and 
his  close,  the  husbandman  also  had  access  to  two  or  three 
kinds  of  common  of  pasture — (1)  a  common  close  for  oxen, 
kine,  or  other  stock,  pasture  in  which  is  stinted  both  for 
landlord  and  tenant ;  (2)  the  open  ("  champaign "  or 
"  champion  ")  country,  where  the  cattle  go  daily  before  the 
herdsmen ;  (3)  the  lord's  outwoods,  moors,  and  heaths, 
where  the  tenants  are  stinted  but  the  lord  is  not.5  Thus 
the  tenant  had  valuable  pasture  rights,  besides  the  land  he 
actually  rented.  But  the  system  of  holding  arable  land 
in  strips  must  have  been  very  cumbrous  and  have  caused 
many  disputes,  since  often  a  tenant  would  hold  a  short 
lease  on  one  strip  and  a  longer  lease  on  another,  or 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  330. 

8  The  rent  charged  for  cows  was  5s.  per  annum.     Rogers,  Hist.  Agric., 
i.  25.  3  For  an  example,  see  below,  p.  186. 

4  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  96.  6  /ft.,  iv.  93. 


n6  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

confusion  of  ownership  would  arise,  while  in  many  ways 
tenure  was  made  insecure,  and  no  encouragement  was 
given  to  advanced  agriculture. 

§   68.  Ploughing. 

As  regards  the  cultivation  of  the  land,  it  was  generally 
ploughed  three  times  a  year.1  Ordinary  ploughing  took 
place  in  the  autumn,  the  second  ploughing  in  April,  the 
third  at  midsummer.  The  furrows  were,  according  to 
Walter  de  Henley,  a  foot  apart,  and  the  plough  was  not  to 
go  more  than  two  fingers  deep.  The  ploughing  and  much 
other  work  was  done  by  oxen,  which  are  recommended  both 
by  Walter  de  Henley  and  by  Fitzherbert  as  being  cheaper 
than  horses,  and  because  they  could  also  be  used  for  food 
when  dead.2  The  hoeing  was  undertaken  by  women,  who 
also  worked  at  harvest  time  in  the  fields.  In  Piers  the 
Plowman's  Crede  (about  1394  A.D.)  we  have  a  description 
of  a  small  farmer  ploughing  while  his  wife  leads  the  oxen  : 
"His  wife  walked  by  him  with  a  long  goad,  in  a  cutted 
cote  cutted  full  high."  3 

An  average  yield  of  something  more  than  six  bushels  per 
acre  is  what  Walter  de  Henley  thinks  necessary  to  secure 
profitable  farming.4  The  chief  crops  seem  to  have  been 
wheat,  barley,  and  oats.5 

§  69.  Stock,  Pigs,  and  Poultry. 

As  to  stock,  the  amount  kept  was  generally  rather  large, 
and  the  agriculturist  of  the  thirteenth  century  was  fully  alive 
to  the  importance  of  keeping  it,6  since  most  of  his  profit 
came  therefrom.  Oxen,  as  we  saw,  were  kept  for  the 
plough  and  draft,  but  not  much  stock  was  fatted  for  the 
table,  especially  as  it  could  not  be  kept  in  the  winter. 
There  was  no  attempt  to  improve  breeds  of  cattle,  for  the 
scarcity  of  winter  food  (winter  roots  being  unknown  till 
much  later)  r  and  the  general  want  of  means  for  resisting 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  270  n.,  and  329. 

2  Walter  de  Henley,  quoted  in  Hist.  Agric.,  i.   328;  and  Fitzherbert, 
quoted  ib.,  iv.  41. 

3  Line  433.  4  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  270,  note. 
8  /&.,  i.  26.            6  Ib.,  i.  36,  and  46-59,  and  p.  21.  7  Ib.,  i.  52. 


AGRICULTURE  IN  MEDIEVAL  ENGLAND    117 

the  severities  of  the  winter  helped  to  keep  all  breeds 
much  upon  the  same  level.1  On  the  other  hand,  swine  were 
kept  in  large  numbers,2  for  every  peasant  had  his  pig  in 
his  sty,  and,  indeed,  probably  lived  on  salt  pork  most  of  the 
winter.  Care  was  taken  with  the  different  breeds.3  The 
whole  of  the  parish  swine  were  generally  put  in  summer 
under  the  charge  of  one  swineherd,  who  was  paid  both  by 
the  tenants  and  the  lord  of  the  manor.4  The  keeping  of 
poultry,  too,  was  at  the  time  universal,  so  much  so  that 
they  were  very  rarely  bought  by  anyone,  and,  when  sold, 
were  almost  absurdly  cheap.6  This  habit  of  keeping  fowls, 
ducks,  and  geese  must  have  materially  helped  the  peasant 
in  ekeing  out  his  wages,  or  in  paying  that  portion  of  his 
rent  which  was  paid  in  kind  ;  as,  e.g.,  in  the  case  of  the 
Cuxham  tenant  (p.  75)  who  had  to  pay  his  lord  six  fowls 
in  all  during  the  year.  Indeed,  "  poultry  rents "  were 
almost  universal.6 

§   70.   Sheep. 

This  animal  is  so  important  in  English  agriculture  that 
we  must  devote  a  special  paragraph  to  it  alone.  For  the 
sheep  was,  in  the  earlier  periods  of  English  industrial 
history,  the  mainstay  of  the  British  farmer,  chiefly,  of 
course,  owing  to  the  quantity  of  wool  required  for  export. 
England  had,  up  to  a  comparatively  recent  period,  almost  a 
monopoly  of  the  raw  wool  trade,  her  only  rival  being  Spain. 
There  were,  as  mentioned  before,  a  great  number  of  breeds 
of  sheep,  and  much  care  was  taken  to  improve  them.7 
The  fleece,  however,  was  light,  being  only  as  an  average 
about  two  Ibs.,  according  to  Professor  Kogers,8  and  the 
animal  was  small.  The  reason  of  this  was  that  the  attempts 
of  the  husbandman  to  improve  his  breeds  were  baffled  by 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agrir,.,  i.  p.  52.  2  Ib.,  i.  336. 

3  Walter  De  Henley,  quoted  in  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  336. 

4  The  same  custom  has  been  observed  by  the  author  in  Swiss  mountain 
villages,  where  a  common  goatherd  takes  care  of  the  goats  of  the  peasants, 
being  paid  so  much  per  goat  by  each  villager,  and  receiving  also  board  and 
lodging  for  a  night  in  turn  from  each. 

8  Rogers,  Hint.  Agric.,  i.  339;  iv.  58. 

•  Ib.,  i.  339.  7  Ib.,  i.  333.  "  Ib.,  i.  53. 


n8  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  hardships  of  the  medifeval  winter,  and  by  the  preval- 
ence of  disease,  especially  the  rot  and  scab.1  It  is  probable 
that  the  average  loss  on  the  flocks  was  20  per  cent,  a  year. 
They  were  generally  kept  under  cover  from  November  to 
April,  and  fed  on  coarse  hay,  wheat,  and  oat  straw,  or  pea 
and  vetch  haulm  ; 2  but  no  winter  roots  were  available. 

§  71.  Increase  of  Sheep- farming. 

A  great  increase  of  sheep-farming  took  place  after  the 
Great  Plague  (1348),  and  this  from  two  causes.3  The 
rapid  increase  of  woollen  manufactures,  promoted  by  Edward 
III.,  rendered  wool-growing  more  profitable,  while  at  the 
same  time  the  scarcity  of  labour,  occasioned  by  the  ravages 
of  the  Black  Death,  and  the  consequently  higher  wages 
demanded,  naturally  attracted  the  farmer  to  an  industry 
which  was  at  once  very  profitable,  and  required  but  little 
paid  labour.  So,  after  the  Plague,  we  find  a  tendency 
among  large  agriculturists  to  turn  ploughed  fields  into 
permanent  pasture,  or,  at  any  rate,  to  use  the  same  land 
for  pasture  and  for  crops,  instead  of  turning  portions  of  the 
"  waste  "  into  arable  land.  Consequently,  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fifteenth  century  we  notice  that  the  agricultural 
population  decreases  in  proportion  as  sheep  farming  in- 
creases, and  the  steady  change  may  be  traced  in  numerous 
preventive  statutes  till  we  come  to  those  of  Henry  VIII.  about 
decayed  towns,  especially  in  the  Midlands,  the  south,  and  the 
Isle  of  Wight.4  The  author  of  a  political  song  of  Henry  VI. 's 
reign  declared  that  our  enemies  sneered  at  English  sheep- 
farming  and  thought  it  lessened  our  naval  power.5  Another 
cause  that,  in  Henry  VIII.'s  time,  had  a  distinct  influence 
in  promoting  sheep-farming  was  probably  the  lack  of  capital 
which  made  itself  felt,  owing  to  the  general  impoverishment 
of  England  in  his  wasteful  reign,  and  which  naturally  turned 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  31,  334. 

2  Walter  de  Henley,  in  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  334. 

3  Cf.  Cunningham,  English  Industry,  i.  361. 

4  Cf.  6  Henry  VIII.,  c.  6 ;  7  Henry  VIII.,  c.  1 ;  27  Henry  VIII.,  c.  22 ; 
and  32  Henry  VIII. ,  cc   18  and  19. 

BFrom  YeLibdle  of  Enrjlishe  Policie,  vv.  36,  37. 


AGRICULTURE   IN   MEDIEVAL  ENGLAND    119 

farmers  to  an  industry  that  required  little  capital,  but  gave 
quick  returns.1  We  should  also  add  as  another  cause  the  rise 
in  prices  caused  by  the  discoveries  of  silver  in  the  New  World. 

§  72.   Consequent  Increase  of  Encl-osures. 

One  consequence  of  this  more  extensive  sheep-farming 
was  the  great  increase  in  enclosures  made  by  the  landlords 
in  the  sixteenth  century.2  So  great  were  these  encroach- 
ments and  enclosures  in  north-east  Norfolk,  that  they  led, 
in  1549,  to  a  rebellion  against  the  enclosing  system,  headed 
by  Ket ;  3  but  though  more  marked  perhaps  in  Henry  VIII. 's 
reign,  the  practice  of  sheep-farming  had  been  growing 
steadily  in  the  previous  century.  Fortescue,  the  Lord 
Chancellor  of  Henry  VI.  (about  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century),  refers  to  its  growth  and  the  prosperity  it  caused 
in  rural  districts  4 — a  prosperity,  however,  that  must  have 
been  confined  only  to  the  great  landowners.  We  receive 
other  confirmation  of  this  from  various  statutes  designed 
to  prevent  the  rural  population  from  flowing  into  the 
towns,  as,  for  example,  the  Acts  of  1  and  9  Richard  II. 
(1377  and  1385),  of  17  Richard  II.  (1394),  promoting 
the  export  of  corn  in  hopes  of  making  arable  land  more 
valuable.6  Another  Act  was  passed  in  1489  (4  Henry 
VII.,  c.  16)  to  keep  the  rural  population  from  the 
towns.  In  fact,  it  is  very  clear  that  at  this  time  a 
great  change  was  passing  over  English  agriculture,  and 
the  old  agricultural  system  was  becoming  seriously 
disorganised.  But  the  growth  of  sheep-farming  is  also 
connected  with  a  great  economic  and  industrial  develop- 
ment in  England — the  rise  and  progress  of  cloth  manu- 
factures and  of  the  weaving  industry  generally,  and  to  this 
we  must  now  devote  our  next  chapter. 

1  Of.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  445. 

3  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric. ,  iv.   109 ;  and  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry, 
i.  362. 

'Rogers,  Hist.  Ayric.,  iv.  124  ;  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  428. 

4  Sir  John  Fortescue  wrote  a  treatise  called  The  Comodytes  of  England 
before  1451  ;  and  his  works  were  edited  by  Lord  Clement ;  c/.  i.  551. 

5  At  the  request  of  the  Commons,  Richard  "  granted  licence  to  all  his 
liege  people  of  the  realm  of  England  to  carry  corn  out  of  the  same  realm  to 
what  parts  they  please  them,  except  to  his  enemies  ; "  17  R.  II.,  c.  7. ' 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES 

§  73.  England's  Monopoly  of  Wool. 

THE  development  of  the  woollen  industry  in  England  is 
interesting  and  important  for  two  reasons.1  On  the  one 
hand  it  shows  us  the  origin  of  the  peculiar  wealth  of  our 
country  both  in  the  middle  ages  and  later,  and  on  the 
other  it  illustrates  with  great  clearness  the  evolution  of  our 
industry  generally,  an  evolution  that  begins  with  the  rude 
efforts  of  prehistoric  peoples,  passes  through  the  stages  of 
family  work  and  gild  work  in  hand-made  industry,  till  in 
more  recent  times  it  reaches  the  stage  of  the  machine  and 
the  factory.  It  is  also  particularly  associated  with  our  own 
country,  for  in  the  middle  ages  England  was  the  chief 
wool-producing  country  in  the  North  of  Europe.  Spain 
grew  wool  also,2  but  it  could  not  be  used  alone  for  every 
kind  of  fabric,3  and,  besides,  it  was  more  difficult  to  trans- 
port wool  from  Spain  to  Flanders,  the  seat  of  the  manufac- 
ture of  that  article,4  than  it  was  to  send  it  across  the 
narrow  German  Ocean,  where  swarms  of  light  craft  plied 
constantly  between  Flanders  and  the  eastern  ports  of 
England.5  Hence  England  had  a  practical  monopoly  of 
the  wool  trade.6  which  was  due  not  only  to  its  favourable 
climate  and  soil,  but  also  to  the  fact  that  even  at  the  worst 
periods  of  civil  war — and  they  did  not  last  for  long — our 
island  was  incomparably  more  peaceful  than  the  countries 
of  Western  Europe.  From  the  thirteenth  to  the  seventeenth 
century  the  farmers  of  Western  Europe  could  not  possibly 
have  kept  sheep,  the  most  defenceless  and  tender  of  domestic 

1  Ashley,  Early  History  of  the  English  Woollen  Industry,  p.  1. 

2  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  59. 

3  Bonwick,  Romance  of  the  Wool  Trade,  p.  346. 

4  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  58. 

5  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  124.  6  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  p.  35, 


WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES  121 

animals,  amid  the  wars  that  were  continually  devastating 
their  homesteads ;  nor,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  did  they  do  so.1 
But  in  England,  especially  after  the  twelfth  century,  nearly 
everybody  in  the  realm,  from  the  king  to  the  villein,  was 
concerned  in  agriculture,  and  was  interested  therefore  in 
maintaining  peace.  Even  when  the  great  landlords,  after 
the  Plague  of  1348,  gave  up  the  cultivation  of  their  arable 
land,  they  often  undertook  sheep-farming,  and  enclosed 
large  tracts  of  land  for  that  purpose.  Hence  the  export 
trade  in  wool  became  more  and  more  important,  and  there 
was  always  a  continual  demand  for  English  wool  to  supply 
the  busy  looms  of  the  great  manufacturing  towns  in 
Flanders,  Holland,2  and  even  Florence3  in  Italy. 

§  74.    Wool  and  Politics. 

The  most  convincing  proof  of  the  importance  of  the 
wool  trade  is  seen  in  England's  diplomatic  relations  with 
Flanders,  which,  by  the  way,  afford  an  interesting  example 
of  the  necessity  of  taking  economic  factors  into  account  in 
dealing  with  national  history.  Flanders  was  the  great 
manufacturing  country  of  Europe  at  that  time.  England 
supplied  its  raw  material  in  vast  quantities,  and  nine-tenths 
of  English  wool  went  to  the  looms  of  Bruges  and  Ghent. 
A  stoppage  of  this  export  from  England  used  to  throw  half 
the  population  of  the  Flemish  towns  out  of  work,  and  cause 
great  misery.4  The  immense  transactions  that  even  then 
took  place  are  seen  from  the  fact  that  a  single  company  of 
Florentine  merchants  would  contract 5  with  the  Cistercian 
monks  of  England  for  the  whole  year's  supply  of  the  wool 
produced  on  their  vast  sheep-ranges  on  the  Yorkshire 
moorlands ;  for  the  Cistercian  order  were  among  the  fore- 
most wool-growers  in  the  country.6  Now,  it  is  a  curious 
and  significant  fact  that  when  Edward  L,  Edward  III.,  and 
Henry  V.  premeditated  an  attack  on  France,  they  generally 
took  care  to  gain  the  friendship  of  Flanders  first,7  so  as  to 

1  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.,  p.  9. 

2  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  60.  3  /!>.,  p.  58. 

*  Ashley,  Jame*  and  Philip  von  Aatevelde,  84,  91. 

6  Cf.  Peruzzi,  Commercio  e  Sanchieri  di  Firenze,  70,  71. 

•  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  61.       7  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.,  p.  8. 


122  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

use  that  country  as  a  base  from  which  to  enter  France,  or 
at  least  as  a  useful  ally ;  and  secondly,  they  paid  a  large 
proportion  of  the  expenses  of  their  French  expeditions  by 
means  of  a  wool-tax  in  England.  Thus,  when  Edward  III. 
opened  his  campaign  against  France  in  1340,  he  did  so 
from  Flanders,1  with  special  help  afforded  by  a  Flemish 
alliance.  This  king  also  received  annually  £60,000  from 
the  wool-tax  alone,2  and  on  special  occasions  even  more. 
Again,  it  was  a  grant  of  6s.  8d.  on  each  sack  of  wool 
exported  that  enabled  Edward  I.  in  1275  to  fill  his 
treasury  for  his  subsequent  invasion  of  Wales.3  The  same 
king  in  1297  obtained  the  means  for  equipping  an  expedi- 
tion against  France,  via  Flanders,  from  the  same  source. 
Similarly  Henry  V.  took  care  to  cultivate  the  friendship  of 
the  Flemish  and  their  rulers  before  setting  out  to  gain  the 
French  crown,  and  paid  for  his  expedition  by  raising  taxes 
on  wool  and  hides.4  We  may  add  to  the  notices  here 
given  the  treaty  of  1274  between  Edward  I.  and  the 
Countess  of  Flanders,  protecting  the  export  of  English 
wool  to  Flanders,  and  the  well-known  case  of  Perkin 
Warbeck.  This  impostor  was  supported  by  the  dowager 
Duchess  of  Burgundy,  and  was  well  received  in  Flanders, 
then  ruled  by  the  Archduke  Philip.  As  Philip,  at  the 
instigation  of  the  Duchess,  encouraged  Warbeck,  Henry 
VII.  took  the  step  of  banishing  all  Flemings  from  England 
(1493),  and  as  Philip  replied  by  expelling  all  the  English 
from  Flanders,  commercial  intercourse  between  the  two 
countries  was  almost  entirely  suspended.  The  result  was 
that,  as  Bacon  tells  us,5  this  interruption  "  began  to  pinch 
the  merchants  of  both  nations  very  sore,"  and  they  besought 
their  respective  sovereigns  "  to  open  the  intercourse  again." 
Philip  withdrew  his  support  from  Warbeck,  and  the  im- 
postor was  left  without  resources,  so  that  his  subsequent 
appearance  in  England  was  a  complete  failure.  The  want 
of  English  wool  thus  altered  the  policy  of  the  Flemish 
rulers,  and  before  long  the  "great  treaty,"  or  Intercursus 

1  Green,  Hist,  of  England,  i.  411.  2  Rot.  Parl.,  ii.  200. 

3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  ii.  192,  244.          4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  304. 

5  Bacon's  History  of  King  Henry  VII.  (ed.  by  Lumby),  p.  144,  which 
see  for  full  account  of  Warbeck. 


WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES  123 

Magnus,  was  made  between  the  two  nations  (1496),  by 
which  trade  was  once  more  allowed  to  proceed  unchecked, 
and  "  the  English  merchants  came  again  to  their  mansion 
at  Antwerp,  where  they  were  received  with  procession  and 
great  joy."  * 

Henry  VII.  also  made  a  commercial  treaty  with  Den- 
mark 2  (1490),  and  one  with  the  Republic  of  Florence, 
securing  to  that  city  a  stipulated  supply  of  English  wool 
every  year.3  The  enormous  revenues  also,  which  from  the 
thirteenth  to  the  fifteenth  centuries  were  exacted  from 
England  by  the  Papal  Court,  and  by  the  Italian  ecclesiastics 
quartered  on  English  benefices,  were  transmitted  in  the 
shape  of  wool  to  Flanders,  and  sold  by  the  Lombard 
exchangers,  who  transmitted  the  money  thus  realised  to 
Italy.4  Matthew  Paris  estimated  the  amount  of  ordinary 
papal  taxation  for  the  year  1245  at  a  sum  of  no  less  than 
60,000  marks.5  The  extent  of  these  revenues  may  also  be 
gathered  from  the  fact  that  the  Parliament  of  1343,  in  a 
petition  against  Papal  appointments  to  English  ecclesiastical 
vacancies,  asserted  that  "The  Pope's  revenue  from  Eng- 
land alone  is  larger  than  that  of  any  Prince  in  Christen- 
dom."6 And  at  this  very  time  the  deaneries  of  Lichfield, 
Salisbury,  and  York,  and  the  archdeaconry  of  Canterbury, 
were  all  held  by  Italian  dignitaries,  while  the  Pope's  collec- 
tor sent  from  London  20,000  marks  a  year  to  his  master  at 
Rome.7  Now,  these  impositions  were  paid  out  of  the  pro- 
ceeds of  English  wool.  It  is  interesting,  too,  to  find  that 
taxes  for  King  Edward  III.  were  calculated,  not  in  money, 
but  in  sacks  of  wool.  In  one  year  (1338)  the  Parliament 
granted  him  20,000  sacks  ;8  in  another  year  (1340)  30,000 
sacks.9  In  1339  the  barons  had  granted  him  "the  tenth 
aheaf,  fleece,  and  lamb."  10  Early  in  the  fifteenth  century 

1  Bacon's  History  of  King  Henry  VII.,  p.  147. 

3  Rymer,  Foedera,  xii.  381.  *  Ib.,  xn.  390. 

4  Cf.  Cunningham,  English  Industry,  i.  194,  271,  378 ;  and  Schanz,  Engl. 
Handelspolitik,  i.  111. 

8  Quoted  by  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Eng.   Industry  (1  vol.  ed.  1882), 
p.  146. 

6  Green,  Hist,  of  English  People,  i.  408.        7  76.,  p.  408. 
8  Foedera,  ii.  1022,  1049,  1064.  "  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  ii.  380. 

10  76. 


124  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

£80,000  out  of  the  £40,000  revenue  from  customs  and 
taxes  came  from  wool  alone.1  Once  more,  as  in  the  days  of 
the  Crusades,  we  are  able  to  see  how  the  Hundred  Years' 
War  with  France  and  the  exactions  of  Rome  were  paid 
for  by  the  industrial  portion  of  the  community,  while  under- 
neath the  glamour  of  the  victories  of  Edward  III.  and 
Henry  V.  lies  the  prosaic  but  powerful  wool-sack. 

§  75.  Prices  and  Brands  of  English  Wool. 

Having  now  seen  the  importance  of  wool  as  a  factor  in 
English  industry  and  in  political  history,  we  must  proceed  to 
study  more  closely  the  facts  of  the  woollen  trade,  and  the 
manufacture  of  woollen  cloth.  The  chief  growers  of  wool 
were  the  Cistercian  monks,2  who  owned  huge  flocks  of 
sheep.  The  wool  grown  near  Leominster,  in  Herefordshire, 
was  the  finest  of  all,  and,  generally  speaking,  that  grown  in 
Wiltshire,  Essex,  Sussex,  Hampshire,  Oxfordshire,  Cam- 
bridge, and  Warwickshire  was  the  best.3  The  poorest  came 
from  the  North  of  England  and  from  the  Southern  downs. 
There  were  a  number  of  different  breeds  of  sheep,  for  care 
was  taken  to  improve  the  breed,  and  it  would  seem  that 
forty- four  different  brands  of  English  wool,  ranging  in  value 
from  £13  to  £2,  10s.  the  sack  (of  364  Ibs.)  were  recognised 
both  in  the  home  and  foreign  markets.4  The  average  price  5 
of  wool  from  1260-1400  was  2s.  Ifd.  per  clove  of  7  Ibs., 
i.e.,  a  little  over  threepence  a  pound,  sometimes  fourpence. 
In  the  middle  of  this  period  (1354)  the  average  annual 
export,  according  to  Misselden,6  was  about  32,000  sacks, 
which  is  equal  to  11,648,000  Ibs.,  representing  a  value  of 
some  £180,683  yearly.7  At  this  time  the  export  trade  in 
wool  between  England  and  the  Low  Countries  was  not 
carried  on  by  English  merchants,  but  by  foreigners,  and 
chiefly  those  belonging  to  what  was  known  as  the  "  Hanse 
of  London."  8  This  was  not  the  great  Teutonic  Hansa,  but 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  305. 

2  Cunningham,  Growth  oflndiistry,  i.  547.    3  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  383. 

*  Rot.  Parl,  32  Hen.  VI.  5  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  366. 

8  Circle  of  Commerce,  119.  7  Cf.  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  367. 

8  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  p.  38.  Of  course  the  Teutonic  Hansa  also 
was  engaged  in  the  wool  trade. 


WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES  125 

was  an  association  of  merchants  from  the  towns  of  Rheims, 
Amiens,  and  others  in  North  France  and  Flanders,  and 
even  from  Paris,  who  traded  with  England  for  English 
wool.1  Merchants  also  came  for  wool  from  Cologne,  and 
the  men  of  Cologne  had  a  house  in  London  (distinct  from 
the  Teutonic  Hansa's  house)  as  early  as  1157.2  These 
merchants  would  supply  the  towns  on  the  Rhine,  for  many 
of  these  cities  had  flourishing  cloth  manufactures.3 

§  76.  English  Manufactures. 

Now,  although  Flanders  has  been  mentioned  as  the  chief 
manufacturing  centre  for  Europe,  it  must  not  be  sup- 
posed that  England  could  not  manufacture  any  of  the  large 
quantity  of  wool  which  it  grew.  Undoubtedly  the  people 
of  the  Netherlands  were  at  that  time  the  great  manufac- 
turers of  the  world,  and  were  acquainted  with  arts  and 
processes  to  which  the  English  were  strangers,  while  for  a 
long  time  the  English  could  not  weave  fine  cloths  :  but, 
nevertheless,  there  was  a  considerable  manufacturing  in- 
dustry, chiefly  of  coarse  cloths,4  an  industry  very  widely 
spread,  and  carried  on  in  people's  own  cottages  under  the 
domestic  5  system.  This  industry  was  encouraged  by  the 
Government  in  occasional,  but  of  course  futile,  regulations 
prohibiting  the  export  of  wool,  in  order  that  it  might  be 
used  for  home  manufactures.6  The  chief  kinds  of  cloth 
made  were  hempen,  linen,  and  woollen  coverings,  such  as 
would  be  used  for  sacks,  dairy-cloths,  woolpacks,  sails  of 
windmills,  and  similar  purposes.7  The  great  textile  centres 
were  Norfolk  (Norwich) 8  and  Suffolk,  where,  indeed,  manu- 
facturing industries  had  existed  long  before  the  earliest 
records.  An  idea  of  their  importance  may  be  given  from 
the  fact  that,  in  the  assessment  for  the  wool-tax  of  1341, 

I  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  p.  36. 

II  Lappenberg,  Hans.  Stalhofzu  London,  Urk.,  2. 

3  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  p.  38. 

4  Cf.  Walter  of  Hemlngburgh,  Chronicon,  i.  306  (Eng.  Hist.  Soc.,  1848). 
8  Cunningham,  i.  394. 

6  E.g.,  the  Oxford  Parliament  of  1258  prohibited  export  of  wool.     Of. 
Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  p.  39,  and  his  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  ch.  iii.  p.  194. 

7  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  568. 

8  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  866. 


126  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

Norfolk  was  counted  by  far  the  wealthiest  county  in  Eng- 
land after  Middlesex  (including  London).1  There  was  also 
a  cloth  industry  of  importance  in  the  West  of  England,  the 
chief  centures  being  Westbury,  Sherborne,  and  Salisbury.2 
The  linen  of  Aylsham  were  also  celebrated.3  That  there 
was  even  some  export  of  cloth  as  well  as  raw  wool  is  clear 
from  Misselden's  statement,4  that  in  1354  A.D.  there  was 
exported  4774|  pieces  of  cloth,  valued  at  40s.  each,  and 
806|  pieces  of  worsted  stuff,  at  16s.  8d.  each. 

§  77.  Foreign  Manufacture  of  Fine  Goods. 

But  we  find  rich  people  used  to  purchase  the  fine  cloths 
from  abroad5 — e.g.,  linen  from  Liege  and  Flanders  gener- 
ally, and  velvet  and  silk  goods  from  Genoa  and  Venice — 
although  there  was  certainly  a  silk  industry  in  London, 
carried  on  chiefly  by  women,  and  protected  by  an  Act  of 
1455.6  Misselden4  mentions  the  import  of  1831  pieces 
of  fine  cloth,  valued  at  no  less  than  £6  each.  But  in  the 
England  of  which  we  are  now  speaking,  the  textile  in- 
dustries were  prevented  from  attaining  a  full  development 
from  the  fact  that,  though  general,  they  were  strictly  local ; 
and,  moreover,  those  who  practised  them  did  not  look  upon 
their  handicraft  as  their  sole  means  of  livelihood,  but  even 
till  the  eighteenth  century  were  generally  engaged  in  agri- 
culture as  well.  The  cause  of  this  is  connected  with  the 
isolation  and  self  -  sufficiency  of  separate  communities, 
previously  noted.  An  evidence  of  the  consequent  in- 
feriority of  English  to  Flemish  cloth  is  given  by  the  fact 
that  an  Act  of  1261  attempts  to  prohibit  the  import  of 
spun  stuff  and  the  export  of  wool.  Needless  to  say  it  was 
useless.  The  prices  of  cloth  at  this  period  are  interesting, 
as  showing  the  great  difference  between  the  fine  (i.e.,  foreign) 
and  coarse  (home)  cloths.  The  average  price  of  linen  is  4d. 
an  ell,  being  as  low  as  2d.,  and  as  high  as  8£d.  Inferior 
woollens  sold  at  Is.  7£d.  a  yard,  "russet"  at  Is.  4d., 
blanketing  at  Is.  On  the  other  hand,  scarlet  cloth  (foreign) 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  115,  116.     2  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  570. 

3  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  105.        4  Misselden,  Circle  of  Commerce,  119. 

8  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  570.          6  33  Hen.  VI.,  c.  5. 


WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES  127 

rises  to  the  enormous  price  of  15s.  a  yard.  Cloth  for 
liveries  varied  from  2s.  Id.  to  Is.  per  yard.  Speaking 
generally  for  the  period  1260-1400,  we  may  give  the 
average  price  of  the  best  quality  at  3s.  3£d.  a  yard  from 
1260-1350,  and  3s.  5£d.  from  1350-1400;  while  cloth 
of  the  second  quality  fetched  Is.  4£d.  in  the  first  period, 
and  Is.  ll^d.  in  the  second.1 

§  78.   Flemish  Settlers  teach  the  English  Weavers. 
Norwich. 

It  is  to  Edward  III.,  very  largely,  that  the  development 
of  English  textile  industry  is  due.  It  is  true  that,  long 
before,  Henry  II.  had  endeavoured  to  stimulate  English 
manufacture  by  establishing  a  "  cloth  fair  "  in  the  church- 
yard of  St  Bartholomew 2  at  Smithfield.  But  English 
industry  had  developed  slowly  till  the  days  of  Edward, 
partly,  no  doubt,  owing  to  the  continual  disorder  of  the 
preceding  reigns.  Stimulated,  probably,  by  his  wife 
Philippa's  connection  with  Flanders,  he  encouraged  Flemish 
weavers  to  settle  in  England,  and  also  brought  back  home 
some  Englishmen  who  had  settled  in  Flanders  and  were 
apparently  engaged  in  the  cloth  manufacture.  Such,  at 
any  rate,  appears  to  be  the  case  from  a  perusal  of  an 
anonymous  work  dealing  with  this  action  of  Edward  III., 
and  entitled  The  Golden  Fleece.3  The  account  runs  thus — 

"  The  wools  of  England  have  ever  been  of  great  honour 
and  reception  abroad,  as  hath  been  sufficiently  witnessed 
by  the  constant  amity  which,  for  many  hundred  years,  hath 
been  inviolably  kept  between  the  Kings  of  England  and 
the  Dukes  of  Burgundy,  only  for  the  benefit  of  the  wool, 
whose  subjects,  receiving  the  English  wool  at  6d.  a  pound, 
returned  it  (through  the  manufacture  of  these  industrious 
people)  in  cloth  at  10s.  a  yard,  to  the  great  enriching  of 
that  state,  both  in  revenue  to  their  sovereign  and  in  em- 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  568-593,  and  ii.  536-542. 

8  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  65 ;  Bonwick,  Romance  of  the  Wool  Trade, 
339. 

3  The  extract  is  found  in  Burnley's  History  of  Wool  and  Woolcombing, 
p.  61.  The  Golden  Fleece  was  published  anonymously  in  1599,  but  treats 
of  an  earlier  period  also. 


128  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

ployment  to  their  subjects,  which  occasioned  the  merchants 
of  England  to  transport  their  whole  families  in  no  small 
numbers  into  Flanders,  from  whence  they  had  a  constant 
trade  to  most  parts  of  the  world. 

"  And  this  intercourse  and  trade  between  England  and 
Burgundy  endured  till  King  Edward  III.  made  his  mighty 
conquests  over  France  and  Scotland,  when  he  projected 
how  to  enrich  his  people  and  to  people  his  new  conquered 
dominions  ;  and  both  these  he  designed  to  effect  by  means 
of  his  English  commodity,  wool ;  all  which  he  accomplished, 
though  not  without  great  difficulties  and  opposition ;  for 
he  was  not  only  to  bring  back  his  own  subjects  home,  who 
were  and  who  had  been  long  settled  in  -those  parts,  with 
their  whole  families  (many  of  which  had  not  so  certain 
habitations  in  England  as  in  Flanders),  but  he  was  also  to 
invite  clothiers  over  to  convert  his  wools  into  clothing  (and 
these  were  the  subjects  of  another  prince),  or  else  the 
stoppage  of  the  stream  would  choke  the  mill,  and  then  not 
only  clothing  would  everywhere  be  lost,  but  the  materials 
resting  upon  his  English  subjects'  hands  would  soon  ruin 
the  whole  gentry  and  yeomanry  for  want  of  vending  their 
wools.  Now,  to  show  how  King  Edward  smoothed  these 
rough  and  uneven  passages  were  too  tedious  for  this  short 
narrative,  though  otherwise  in  their  contrivance  they  may 
be  found  to  be  ingenious,  pleasing,  and  of  great  use." 

We  may  note  also  a  statute1  of  the  year  1337,  which 
offers  protection  to  all  foreign  clothworkers  who  may  settle 
in  England,  and,  at  the  same  time,  in  order  to  encourage 
home  manufactures,  prohibits,  on  the  one  hand,  the  export 
of  wool,  and,  on  the  other,  the  import  of  foreign  cloth. 
After  this  date  large  numbers  of  foreigners  seem  to  have 
come  over  here,2  and  complaints  against  them  are  frequently 
made  by  English  cloth  manufacturers.3  But,  although 
Englishmen  naturally  felt  some  jealousy  of  this  foreign 
immigration,  it  resulted  in  lasting  good  to  the  industry  and 
trade  of  our  country,  and  undoubtedly  increased  our  wealth 
very  greatly. 

1  The  2  Ed.  III.,  cc.  3,  4.  2  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  47. 

3  Madox,  Firma  Burgi,  284  n.,  col.  2. 


WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES  129 

The  Flemish  weavers  settled  chiefly  in  the  eastern 
couqties,  though  we  hear  of  two  Flemings  from  Brabant l 
settling  in  York  in  1336  ;  and  shortly  before  this  time  one 
John  Kemp,2  also  a  Fleming,  removed  from  Norwich,  and 
founded  in  Westmoreland  (1331)  the  manufacture  of  the 
famous  "  Kendal  green."  The  chief  centre,  however,  of 
the  foreign  weavers  was  naturally  Norwich,3  the  Manchester 
of  those  days,  with  a  population  of  some  6000,*  and  the 
chief  industry  was  that  of  worsted  cloths,  so  named  from 
the  place  of  manufacture,  Worstead.  When  we  speak  of 
worsted  cloths,  we  mean  those  plain,  unpretending  fabrics 
that  probably  never  went  beyond  a  plain  weave  or  a  four- 
shaft  twill.  The  yarn  was  very  largely  spun  on  the  rock 
or  distaff,  by  means  of  a  primitive  whorl  or  spindle,  while 
the  loom  was  but  a  small  improvement  on  that  in  which 
Penelope  wove  her  famous  web.5  There  was  a  great  demand 
among  religious  orders  for  sayes  and  the  like,  of  good 
quality ;  plain  worsteds  were  generally  worn  by  the 
ordinary  public. 

§  79.  The  Worsted  Industry. 

Whether  the  growth  of  the  worsted  cloth  industry  was 
connected  or  not  with  this  particular  Flemish  immigration 
we  cannot  determine,  but  after  the  Flemings  came  it  seems 
to  have  increased.6  The  manufacture  was  confirmed  to  the 
town  of  Worstead  by  a  patent  of  1315;7  and  in  1328, 

1  Rymer,  Focdera,  ii.  9,">4.  *  Ib.,  ii.  823. 

8  Bonwick,  Romance  of  the  Wool  Trade,  366. 
4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  117. 

6  Compare  two  interesting  pictures,  one  of  weaving  (about  A.D.  1 130-1 174), 
from  M.S.  Trin.  Coll.  Camb.,  R.  17,  1 ;  and  the  other  of  a  loom  from  the 
Faroe  Isles,  from  Montelius,  Civilisation  of  Sweden,  both  reproduced  in 
Green's  History  of  the  English  People,  illustrated  edition,  voL  I.  pp.  171 
and  172. 

8  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  50. 

7  Worsted  is  first  mentioned  in  official  records  in  the  eighth  year  of 
Edward  II.  (1315),  when  the  clothiers  of  Norwich  are  accused  of  making 
pieces  of  only  25  yards  in  length  and  selling  them  as  being  of  30  yards. 
But,  of  course,  worsted  as  a  material  was  known  long  before  this  period. 
William  Rufus  had  a  pair  of  stockings  of  "  say,"  a  kind  of  worsted,  which 
were  valued  at  3s.,  a  very  high  price  for  those  days.     See  Burnley,  tU 

,  51. 


130  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

also,  Edward  III.  issued  a  letter  patent x  on  behalf  of  the 
cloth  workers  in  worsted  in  the  county  of  Norfolk.  The 
manufacture  was  already  so  extensive  and  important  that 
next  year  a  special  "  aulnager " 2  (or  cloth  searcher)  was 
appointed  to  inspect  the  worsted  stuffs  of  Norwich  and 
district,  who  held  his  office  for  twenty  years.  In  1348, 
however,  on  the  petition  of  the  worsted  weavers  and  mer- 
chants themselves,  the  patent  was  revoked,  and  the  aulnager 
removed.3  But  in  1410,  after  Norwich  had  gained  a  new 
charter  (1403),  the  power  of  "aulnage"  was  once  more 
given,  at  its  own  request,  to  its  mayor  and  sheriffs,  or  their 
deputies.4 

§  80.  Gilds  in  the  Cloth  Trade. 

In  the  previous  period  we  referred  to  the  origin  and 
growth  of  the  craft-gilds,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  their 
importance  in  connection  with  the  woollen  industry  at  this 
time.  As  a  separate  craft,  that  of  the  weaver  cannot  be 
traced  back  beyond  the  early  part  of  the  twelfth  century ; 
in  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century,  however,  gilds  of 
weavers  are  found  established  in  several  of  the  larger 
English  towns.5  At  first  they  were  in  voluntary  association, 
though  acting  independently  of  each  other,  but  it  became 
the  policy  of  the  government  in  the  fourteenth  century  to 
extend  the  gild  organisation  over  the  whole  country,  and 
thus  to  bring  craftsmen  together  in  organised  bodies.6 
Elaborate  regulations  were  drawn  up  for  their  governance 
by  Parliament,  or  by  municipalities.  Now,  in  London  at 
this  date  (about  1300),  and  probably  at  Norwich  and  other 
large  towns,  the  woollen  industry  was  divided  into  four  or 
five  branches — the  weavers  and  burellers,  the  dyers  and 
fullers,  and  the  tailors  (cissores)!*  The  weavers  and 
burellers  were  each  in  a  separate  gild,  the  dyers  and  fullers, 
together  in  one,  while  the  tailors  formed  a  third  gild  of 

1  Col.  Rot.  Pat.,  103,  2  Ed.  ILL  2  Col  Hot.  Pat.,  104. 

3  Ib.,  156,  22  Ed.,  HI.  4  Rot.  Parl.,  iii.  637. 

6  The  Pipe  Rolls  of  the  early  years  of  Henry  II.  show  gilds  of  weavers 
in  Winchester,  Huntingdon,  Nottingham,  and  York.  Pipe  Rolls,  2-4 
Hen.  II.,  ed.  1844. 

'Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,^.  17-  7  Ashley,  »7>. ,  27. 


WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES  131 

theft  own.  But  they  were  all  very  conscious  that  they  had 
interests  in  common,  and  they  were  accustomed  to  act  to- 
gether in  matters  affecting  the  industry  as  a  whole,  such  as, 
e.g.,  ordering  cloth  made  in  the  city  to  be  dyed  and  fulled 
in  that  city,  and  not  sent  out  to  some  other  town.1 

§  81.  The  Dyeing  of  Cloth. 

The  dyeing  and  lulling  industry,  however,  could  not  have 
flourished  much  in  England  at  this  time,  for  English  cloths 
were  mostly  sent  to  be  fulled  and  dyed  in  the  Netherlands  ;2 
and  indeed  we  cannot  consider  dyeing  as  a  really  English 
industry  till  the  days  of  James  I.,  where  it  will  be  duly 
mentioned.  At  the  same  time  it  was  not  unknown,  for  it 
was  practised  even  in  early  Celtic  days ; 3  and  we  have 
scarlet,  russet,  and  black  cloths  of  English  make  in  the 
fourteenth  century.4  Woad,  also  for  dyeing,  was  imported 
in  John's  reign.5  But  the  industry  was  chiefly  carried 
on  in  the  Netherlands,  owing  to  the  progress  there  made  in 
the  cultivation  of  madder,  which  forms  the  basis  of  so  many 
different  dyes.  This  plant  has  never  been  at  any  time 
largely  cultivated  in  England,  and,  moreover,  the  Dutch  for 
several  centuries  possessed  the  secret  of  a  process  of  pul- 
verising the  root  in  order  to  prepare  it  for  use.  Such 
being  the  case,  there  is  no  wonder  that  they  far  excelled  the 
English  in  the  art  of  dyeing.6 

§  82.  The  Great  Transition  in  English  Industry. 

From  the  time  of  this  first  Flemish  immigration  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  we  perceive  the  beginning  of  an  im- 
portant modification  in  our  home  industries.  Hitherto 
England  had  been  almost  exclusively  a  purely  agricultural 
country,  growing  large  quantities  of  wool,  exporting  it  as 
raw  material,  and  importing  manufactured  goods  in  ex- 
change. But  from  this  period  the  export  of  wool  gradually 

1  Liber  Custumarum,  127-9  (of  1298  A.D.) 

2  Yeats,  Technical  History  of  Commerce,  p.  147.  3  Page  14  above. 
4  Yeats,  u.  «.,  p.  148. 

8Madox,  Hist.  Exchequer,  531,  632  (in  12  John).     Evidently  the  home 
supply  of  woad,  the  traditional  dye  of  the  ancient  Briton,  was  insufficient. 
•  Yeats,  Tech.  Hist.,  p.  151. 


132  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

declines,  while  on  the  other  hand  our  home  manufactures 
increase,  until  at  length  they  in  turn  are  exported.  Now, 
the  beginnings  of  this  export  date  from  the  fourteenth 
century.1  In  fact,  manufactured  cloth,  and  not  raw  wool 
becomes  the  basis  of  our  national  wealth,  and  frequently 2  the 
export  of  wool  is  forbidden  altogether,  so  that  we  may  have 
the  more  for  the  looms  at  home. 

A  proof  of  the  growing  importance  of  manufacture  in  this 
period  is  the  noticeable  lack  of  labourers  and  the  high 
wages  they  get,  as  set  forth  in  an  Act  of  Henry  IV. 
(1406),3  which  points  to  an  increase  of  weavers  in  all  parts 
of  the  kingdom,  that  takes  labourers  from  other  employ- 
ments. We  may  also  incidentally  note  from  this  the 
growth  of  a  distinct  "  labour  class "  living  upon  wages 
and  not  on  the  land.4 

§  83.    The  Manufacturing  Class  and  Politics. 

The  growing  importance  of  the  manufacturing  and 
merchant  classes  which  were  now  rapidly  springing  up 5 
can  be  clearly  traced  in  the  politics  of  the  Tudor  period. 
In  spite  of  two  great  drawbacks,  the  cloth  manufacture  was 
progressing.  It  had  naturally  been  severely  checked  for  a 
generation  or  so  by  the  awful  national  disaster  of  the  Great 
Plague,  which  occurred  so  soon  after  Edward  III.  had 
helped  to  promote  it  in  England,  and  which  for  the  time 
utterly  paralysed  English  industry  in  all  its  branches.  It 
had  been  checked  again  by  the  long  and  useless  wars  which 
Edward  III.  and  his  successors  carried  on  against  France, 
at  enormous  cost  and  with  no  practical  results,  but  which 
of  course  were  paid  for  out  of  the  proceeds  of  our  national 
industries.  But  after  these  two  checks  it  developed  steadily, 
even  during  the  Wars  of  the  Roses ;  for  these  wars  were 
carried  on  almost  exclusively  by  the  barons  and  their 
retainers,  in  a  series  of  battles  hardly  any  of  which  were  of 

1  Burnley,   Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  66. 

2  By  the  4  Hen.  VII.,  c.  11 ;  22  Hen.  VIII. ,  c.  2;  37  Hen.  VIIL,  c.  15. 

»7  Hen.  IV.,  c.  17.  4  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  vol.  II.  p.  101. 

8  We  note  now  the  growth  of  a  class  of  merchants  who  were  not  manu- 
facturers, but  occupied  solely  in  buying  and  selling  cloth.  Ashley, 
Woollen  Industry,  pp.  68-67. 


WOOLLEN  TRADE  AND  MANUFACTURES  133 

any  magnitude,  exaggerated  though  they  have  been  both 
by  contemporary  and  later  historians.1  These  wars  had 
the  ultimate  effect  of  causing  the  feudal  aristocracy  to 
destroy  itself  in  a  suicidal  conflict,  and  thus  helped  to 
increase  the  influence  of  the  middle  class,  i.e.,  the  merchants 
and  manufacturers,  as  a  factor  in  political  life.  And  thus 
it  became  the  policy  of  the  Tudor  sovereigns,  who  were 
gifted  with  a  certain  amount  of  native  shrewdness,  to  hasten 
the  decaying  power  of  the  feudal  lords  by  simultaneously 
supporting,  and  being  supported  by,  the  middle  class,  and 
to  the  alliance  thus  made  between  the  crown  and  the 
industrial  portion  of  the  community  we  owe  a  rapid  in- 
crease of  commercial  prosperity  which  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  the  greatness  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  and  of  the 
great  mercantile  enterprises  that  succeeded  it. 

1  Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  332-334.  The  Wars  of  the  Roses  seem  to 
have  had  no  effect  upon  wages  and  prices,  even  though  there  may  have 
been  some  disorganisation  ;  cf.  Cunningham,  i.  402. 


THE    TOWNS,    INDUSTRIAL    VILLAGES,    AND    FAIRS 

§  84.   The  Chief  Manufacturing  Towns. 

DURING  the  period  between  the  Norman  Conquest  and 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the  towns,  as  we  saw, 
had  been  gradually  growing  in  importance,  gaining  fresh 
privileges,  and  becoming  almost,  in  some  cases  quite,  in- 
dependent of  the  lord  or  king,  by  the  grant  of  a  charter. 
Moreover,  they  had  grown  from  the  mere  trading  centres  of 
ancient  times  into  seats  of  specialised  industries,  regulated 
and  organised  by  the  craft-gilds.1  This  new  feature  of  the 
industrial  or  manufacturing  aspect  of  certain  towns  is  well 
shown  in  a  compilation,  dated  about  1250,  and  quoted  by 
Professor  Rogers  in  Six  Centuries  of  Work  and  Wages,2 
which  gives  a  list  of  English  towns  and  their  chief  products. 
Hardly  any  of  the  manufacturing  towns  mentioned  are  in 
the  North  of  England,  but  mostly  in  the  East  and  South. 

The  following  table  gives  the  name  of  the  town,  and  its 
manufacture  or  articles  of  sale  : — 


TOWN. 


PRODUCT. 


(1)  Textile  Manufactures. 

Lincoln  Scarlet  cloth. 

Bligh 

Beverley 

Colchester 

Shaftesbury 

Lewes 

Aylesbury 


Blankets. 
Burnet  cloth. 
Russet  cloth. 
Linen  fabrics. 


Warwick 
Bridport 


Cord. 
Cord  and  Hempen 
fabrics. 


TOWN. 

PRODUCT. 

(2)  Bakeries. 

Wycombe 
Hungerford 
St  Albans 

Fine  bread. 

» 
j» 

(3)  Cutlery. 

Maxtead 
Wilton 
Leicester 

Knives. 
Needles. 
Razors. 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  309,  &c. 

2  Six  Centuries,  p.  105.     I  have  classified  the  list  there  given. 


TOWNS,  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,  FAIRS     135 


(4)  Breweries. 

Banbury          Brewing. 
Hitchin  „ 

Ely 


(5)  Markets. 

Ripon 

Nottingham 

Gloucester 

Bristol 

Coventry 


Horses. 

Oxen. 

Iron. 

Leather  and  Hides. 

Soap. 

Northampton  Saddlery. 
Doncaster         Horse-girths. 
Cheater  Skins  and  Furs. 

Shrewsbury  „ 


TOWN. 

Corfe 

Cornwall  \ 
towns   J 


PRODUCT. 
Marble. 
Tiu. 


(6)  Fishing  Towns. 

Grimsby  Cod. 

Rye  Whiting. 

Yarmouth  Herrings. 

Berwick  Salmon. 

(7)  Ports. 

Norwich. 
Southampton. 


Dunwich 


Mills. 


This  list  is  obviously  incomplete,  for  it  omits  towns  like 
Sheffield  and  Winchester,  both  of  which  were  important  as 
manufacturing  towns  from  very  early  times,  though  the 
woollen  manufactures  of  the  latter  were  soon  outstripped  by 
those  of  Hull,  York,  Beverley,1  Lincoln,  Boston,1  and  espe- 
cially Norwich.1  But  such  as  it  is  the  list  is  curious,  chiefly 
as  showing  how  manufactures  have  long  since  deserted  their 
original  abodes,  and  have  been  transferred  to  towns  of  quite 
recent  origin. 

§  85.  Staple  Towns  and  tJie  Merchants. 

It  will  have  been  observed  that  by  the  time  this  list  was 
compiled,  most  towns  were  either  the  seat  of  a  certain 
manufacture  or  the  market  where  such  manufactures  were 
chiefly  sold.  Now,  in  the  days  of  Edward  I.  and  Edward 
II.  (1272-1327)  several  such  towns  were  specially  singled 
out  and  granted  the  privilege  of  selling  a  particular 
product,  the  staple  of  the  district,  and  were  hence  called 
staple  towns.  But  as  the  articles  of  commerce  upon  which 
customs  were  levied  were  wool,  woolfells,  and  leather,  these 
products  are  generally  meant  when  speaking  of  staple 
goods.2  The  singling  out  of  certain  towns  was  adopted  to 
facilitate  the  collection  of  the  customs.8  Besides  a  number 
of  towns  in  England,  staples  were  fixed  at  certain  foreign 
ports  for  the  sale  of  English  goods.  At  onetime  Antwerp4 

1  Cunningham,  i.  181  n.       2  Craik,  Hist,  of  Britiith  Commerce,  i.  120. 
3  Cunningham,  i.  287.          4  Craik,  Hint.  Brit.  Commerce,    i.  121, 


136  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

was  selected  as  the  staple  town  for  our  produce,  at  another 
time  Bruges,1  and  afterwards  St  Omer.2  A  staple  was  also 
set  up  at  Calais3  when  we  took  it  (1347),  but  at  the  loss 
of  that  town  in  1558  it  was  transferred  to  Bruges.4  The 
staple  system  thus  begun  by  the  first  two  Edwards  was 
altered  and  reorganised  by  Edward  III.  His  first  in- 
tention seems  to  have  been  to  abolish  the  whole  system 
of  staples,  at  least  abroad;  and  this  he  did6  in  1328. 
But  such  freedom  of  trade  was  not  maintained  for  long. 
After  various  alterations  and  changes,  it  was  in  1353  finally 
decided  (by  the  27  Ed.  III.,  st.  2,  c.  1)  to  remove  the 
staple  from  all  or  any  foreign  towns,  and  to  hold  it  only 
in  certain  English  towns.  These  were  Newcastle,  York, 
Lincoln,  Norwich,  Westminster,  Canterbury,  Chichester, 
Exeter,  and  Bristol  in  England ;  Caermarthen  for  Wales ; 
and  Dublin,  Waterford,  Drogheda,  and  Cork  for  Ireland. 
To  compensate  for  the  closing  of  foreign  staples,  every 
inducement  was  held  out  to  foreign  merchants  to  frequent 
the  towns  in  England,  though  (with  the  exception  of  the 
years  1353-76)  the  staple  at  Calais  was  allowed  to  remain.6 
Now,  although  regulations  like  these  are  opposed  to  our 
modern  ideas  of  free  competition,  they  were  to  a  certain 
extent  useful  in  the  Middle  Ages,  because  the  existence  of 
staple  towns  facilitated  the  collection  of  custom  duties,  and 
also  secured  in  some  degree  the  good  quality  of  the  wares 
made  in,  or  exported  from,  a  town.  For  special  officers 
were  appointed  to  mark  them  if  of  the  proper  quality  and 
reject  them  if  inferior.7 

We  might  add  that  each  staple  was,  of  course,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  ideas  of  that  time,  subject  to  various  regula- 
tions, and  each  staple  town  had  a  "  mayor  of  the  staple " 
distinct  from  the  mayor  of  the  town,  though  afterwards 
the  two  offices  became  united.8  There  was  also  an 
association  of  "  merchants  of  the  staple,"  who  claimed  to 

1  Rot.  Parl.,  ii.  149  (5),  202  (13).  2  Rot.  Hund.,  i.  406. 

3  "  From  the  time  of  Richard  II.  till  1558  the  staple  was  fixed  at  Calais." 
Cunningham,  i.  372  n. 

4  Bouwick,  Romance  of  Wool  Trade,  172.         5  2  Ed.  III.,  c.  9. 

6  Craik,  Hist.  Brit.  Commerce,  i.  123.  7  Cunningham,  i.  258. 

3  Gross,  Qild  Merchant,  i.  145. 


TOWNS,  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,  FAIRS     137 

date  as  a  separate  body  from  the  time  of  Henry  III.1  Cer- 
tainly there  seems  to  have  been  some  sort  of  recognised 
body  of  English  merchants  trading  with  Flanders  as  early 
as  1313  A.D.,  for  their  "mayor"  is  mentioned  then.2 
Another  association  of  some  importance  as  a  trading  com- 
pany was  The  Company  of  Merchant  Adventurers,  incor- 
porated in  14078  as  a  kind  of  branch  of  the  Mercer's  Com- 
pany. They  appear  to  have  had  dep6ts  in  Exeter  and 
Newcastle,  besides  their  chief  place  in  London,4  and  were 
engaged  in  the  export  of  cloth  as  distinct  from  raw  wool 
and  woolfells,  which,  of  course,  formed  the  business  of  the 
Merchants  of  the  Staple.5  These  associations  are  very  inter- 
esting as  forerunners  of  those  great  trading  companies,  which 
in  later  centuries  did  so  much  to  promote  our  foreign 
trade. 

Now,  these  regulations  of  the  staple,  and  the  growth  of 
these  trading  associations,  show  pretty  clearly  the  growing 
importance  of  commerce  in  national  affairs,  and  also  the 
increasing  prominence  of  merchants  as  a  distinct  and  influ- 
ential class  in  the  community.  Their  influence  arose,  of 
course,  from  their  wealth,  and  was  increased  no  doubt  by 
the  custom  of  those  days,  which  recognised  them  as  a  class 
apart  from  the  laudowners,  who  were  still,  with  the  clergy, 
almost  the  only  people  who  were  supposed  to  count  for  any- 
thing in  national  life.  So  much  were  they  a  special  class, 
that  the  sovereign  often  negotiated  with  them  separately.6 
Thus  in  1339,  when  Edward  III.  was  as  usual  fighting 
against  France,  and  also,  as  usual,  in  great  want  of  money, 
he  was  liberally  supplied  with  loans  by  Sir  William  de  la 
Pole,  a  rich  merchant  of  Hull,  who  acted  on  behalf  of  him- 
self and  many  other  merchants.7  On  one  occasion  he  lent 
the  King  no  less  than  £18,500,  a  most  enormous  sum  for 
those  days.  Sir  Richard  Whittington  performed  similar 
services  for  Henry  IV.  and  Henry  V.8 

1  Cunningham,  i.  287.  a  Rymer,  Foedera,  ii.  102. 

3  Ib.,  viii.  484.  «  Gross,  Gild  Merchant,  i.  163. 

8  Rot.  Parl.,   v.    64  (38),  speaks  of  "their  merchandises  of  wool  and 
woolfell." 

•  Stubbs,  Const.  Hi*t.,  ii.  191,  192. 
7  Craik,  Hist.  Brit.  Commerce,  i.  172.         8  Ib.,  i.  174. 


138  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

The  family  of  Pole,  as  is  well  known,  rose  by  their 
wealth  to  great  rank  and  power,  being  created  successively 
Earls,  Marquises,  and  Dukes  of  Suffolk,  and  took  an  impor- 
tant place  in  the  history  of  the  nation.  The  rise  of  Pole 
and  other  great  merchants  to  the  ranks  of  the  nobility 
marks  a  most  noticeable  social  development  in  English 
history,  for  it  shows  how  the  peerage  has  been  from  almost 
the  earliest  times  recruited  from  commerce,  while  in  many 
other  European  countries  it  was  impossible  for  anyone 
connected  with  trade  to  become  one  of  the  noblesse.  By 
avoiding  this  irrational  exclusiveness,  our  nation  has  to 
some  extent  also  avoided  the  fatal  evils  which  in  other 
countries  have  befallen  an  aristocracy  of  a  more  rigid  type. 

§  86.  Markets. 

Besides  the  staple  towns,  another  class  was  formed  by  the 
country  market  towns,  many  of  which  exist  in  agricultural 
districts  to-day  in  much  the  same  fashion  as  they  did  six 
centuries  ago.  The  control  and  regulation  of  the  town 
market  was  at  first  in  the  hands  of  the  lord  of  the  manor,1 
but  by  this  period  it  had  mostly  been  bought2  by  the 
corporation  or  by  the  merchant  gild,  or  by  both,  and  was 
now  one  of  the  most  valued  of  municipal  privileges.  The 
market-place  was  always  some  large  open  space  within  the 
city  walls,  such  as,  for  instance,  exists  very  noticeably  in 
Nottingham  to  this  day.  London  had  several  such  spaces, 
of  which  the  names  Cornhill,  Cheapside,  and  the  Poultry 
still  remain.  The  capital  was  indeed  a  perpetual  market, 
though  of  course  provincial  towns  only  held  a  market  on 
one  or  two  days  of  the  week.  It  is  curious  to  notice  how 
these  days  have  persisted  to  modern  times.  The  Wednes- 
day and  Saturday  market  of  Oxford  has  existed  for  at  least 
six  centuries,3  if  not  more,  and  so  has  that  of  Nottingham. 
The  control  of  these  markets  was  undertaken  by  the  cor- 
poration for  various  purposes.4  The  first  of  these  was  to 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  i.  p.  426,  and  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  141. 

2  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist. ,  I.  xi.  p.  408  sqq.  implies  this. 

3  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  138. 

4  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  i.  p.   19  ;  also  see  the  Nottingham  Borough 
Record*,  iii.  62. 


TOWNS,  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,  FAIRS     139 

prevent  frauds  and  adulteration  of  goods,  and  for  this 
purpose  special  officers  were  appointed,1  as  in  the  staple 
towns,  or  like  the  "  aulnager "  of  Norwich  mentioned 
before.  This  was  possible  in  a  time  when  industry  was 
limited  and  the  competitive  idea  was  as  yet  unborn,  and 
one  cannot  help  thinking  that  it  must  have  been  of  great 
use  to  purchasers,  provided  only  that  these  officers  were 
incorruptible,  which  was  not  always  the  case.  The  second 
object  of  the  regulators  of  the  market  was  to  keep  prices 
at  a  "  natural  level,"  and  to  regulate  the  cost  of  manufac- 
tured articles.  The  price  of  provisions  in  especial  was  a 
subject  of  much  regulation,  but  our  forefathers  were  not 
very  successful  in  this  point,  laudable  though  their  object 
was.  The  best  example  of  such  regulation  is  found,  per- 
haps, in  the  Act  13  Rich.  II.,  st.  1,  c.  8  (1389-90), 
which  ordains — "  Forasmuch  as  a  man  cannot  put  the  price 
of  corn  and  other  victuals  in  certain,"  the  justices  of  the 
peace  shall  every  year  make  proclamation  "  by  their 
discretion,  according  to  the  dearth  of  victuals,  how  much 
every  mason,  carpenter,  tiler,  and  other  craftsmen,  work- 
men, and  other  labourers  by  the  day  shall  take  by  the  day, 
with  meat  and  drink  or  without  meat  and  drink,  and  that 
every  man  shall  obey  such  proclamations  from  time  to  time, 
as  a  thing  done  by  statute."  Finally,  provision  is  made 
for  the  correct  keeping  of  the  assize,  or  assessment  from 
time  to  time,  of  the  prices  of  bread  and  ale.  The  earliest 
notice  of  an  "  assize  "  in  England  is  found  in  the  Parliament 
Rolls  for  1203,2  but  the  practice  is  probably  much  older, 
and  the  most  ancient  law  upon  the  subject  is  the  51st  Hen. 
III.  (A.D.  1266),  the"Assisa  Panis  et  Cerevisiae."  The 
assize  of  bread  was  in  force  till  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  and  was  only  then  abolished  in  London.8 

The    "  assize "    arranged    by    statute   was,  of  course,  a 
national  matter,  but  many  local  regulations  were  in  force. 

1  Gilds  usually  seem  to  have  appointed  their  own  officers,  except  the  gilds 
of  those  who  were  engaged  in  providing  food  and  drink.     In  these  cases 
the  officers  (such  as  "  ale  conners  "  and  "  flesh  conners  ")  were  appointed  by 
the  borough  authorities.     Cf.  Ashley,  Econ.  Hint.,  II.  i.  p.  30. 

2  5  John  ;  cf.  Craik,  Hint.  Brit.  Commerce,  i.  137. 
1  /&.,  p.  137. 


I4o  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

Strict  laws  were  also  made  l  against  the  practices  of  fore- 
stalling, engrossing,  or  regrating  of  provisions,  i.e.,  buying 
them  in  such  quantities  or  at  such  times  as  to  control  a 
future  market ;  for  there  seems  to  have  been  an  idea — not 
perhaps  altogether  irrational — in  the  minds  of  our  ancestors 
that  it  was  something  unseemly  to  manipulate  the  market 
in  the  case  of  commodities  of  such  universal  consumption 
as  articles  of  food.  Nor  were  the  laws  against  these 
practices  finally  removed  from  the  Statute  Book  till  towards 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.2 

§  87.   The  Great  Fairs. 

Now,  besides  the  weekly  markets  there  were  held  annually 
in  various  parts  of  the  kingdom  large  fairs,  which  often 
lasted  many  days,  and  which  form  a  most  important  and 
interesting  economic  feature  of  the  time.  They  were 
necessary  for  several  reasons,  since  the  ordinary  trader 
could  not  and  did  not  exist  in  the  small  villages,  in  which 
it  must  be  remembered  most  of  the  population  lived,  nor 
could  he  even  find  sufficient  customers  in  a  town  of  that 
time,  for  very  few  contained  over  5000  inhabitants;  and 
because  the  inhabitants  of  the  villages  and  towns  could  find 
in  the  fairs  a  wider  market  for  their  goods,  and  more 
variety  for  their  purchases.  Moreover,  as  has  been  well 
remarked,3  since  the  stream  of  commerce  was  too  weak  in 
those  days  to  penetrate  constantly  to  all  parts  of  the  country, 
this  occasional  concentration  of  trade  in  fairs  was  distinctly 
advantageous  for  industry.  The  result  was  that  these  fairs 
were  frequented  by  all  classes  of  the  population,  from  the 
noble  and  prelate  to  the  villein,4  and  hardly  a  family  in 
England  did  not  at  one  time  of  the  year  or  another  send  a 
representative,  or  at  least  give  a  commission  to  a  friend,  to 
get  goods  at  some  celebrated  fair.  They  afforded  an  oppor- 
tunity for  commercial  intercourse  between  inhabitants  of 
all  parts  of  England,  and  with  traders  from  all  parts  of 

1  Of.  the  Statute  De  Pistoribus,  of  51  Hen.  III.  (or  perhaps  13  Ed.  I.) 
till  the  5  and  6  Ed.  VI.,  c.  14  and  15. 

2  12Geo.  III.,  c.  71.         *  W.  Roscher,  Engl.  Volkswirlhschaftlehre,  133. 
4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  148 


TOWNS,  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,  FAIRS     141 

Europe.  They  were,  moreover,  a  necessity  arising  from  the 
economic  conditions  of  a  time  when  transit  of  goods  was 
comparatively  slow,  and  when  ordinary  people  disliked 
travelling  frequently  or  far  beyond  the  limits  of  their  own 
district.  The  spirit  of  isolation  which  is  so  marked  a 
feature  of  the  mediaeval  town  or  village  *  encouraged  this 
feeling,  and  except  the  trading  class  few  people  travelled 
about,  and  those  who  did  so  were  regarded  with  suspicion. 
Till  the  epoch  of  modern  railways,  in  fact,  fairs  were  a 
necessity,  though  now  the  rapidity  of  locomotion  and  the 
facility  with  which  goods  can  be  ordered  and  despatched, 
have  annihilated  their  utility  and  rendered  their  relics  a  nuis- 
ance. But  even  in  the  present  day  there  are  plenty  of  people 
to  be  found  in  rural  districts  who  have  rarely,  and  some- 
times never,  been  a  dozen  miles  from  their  native  village. 
As  late  as  the  eighteenth  century  several  fairs  of  great 
importance  were  still  in  full  vigour,  as  we  may  see  from  a 
list  given  by  that  ingenious  compiler,  Malachy  Postle- 
thwaite.2  He  mentions — "  (1)  Stourbridge  Fair  near  Cam- 
bridge, beyond  all  comparison  the  greatest  in  Britain,  per- 
haps in  the  world ;  (2)  Bristol,  two  fairs,  very  near  as  great 
as  that  of  Stourbridge  ;  (3)  Exeter ;  (4)  West  Chester  ;  (5) 
Edinburgh  ;  also  several  marts,  as  :  Lynn,  Boston,  Beverley, 
Gainsborough,  Howden,  &c.  ;  (6)  Weyhill  Fair,  and  (7) 
Burford  Fair,  for  sheep ;  (8)  Pancrass  Fair  in  Staffordshire, 
for  saddle  horses  ;  (9)  Bartholomew  Fair  in  London,  for  lean 
and  Welsh  black  cattle  ;  (10)  St  Faith's  in  Norfolk,  for  Scots 
runts;  (11)  Yarmouth  fishing  fair  for  herrings,  the  only 
fishing  fair  in  Great  Britain,  or  that  I  have  heard  of  in  the 
world,  except  the  fishing  for  pearl  oysters  near  Ceylon  in 
the  West  Indies;  (12)  Ipswich  butter  fair;  (13)  Wood- 
borough  Hill  near  Blandford  in  Dorset,  famous  for  West 
country  manufactures,  Devonshire  kersies,  Wiltshire  druggets, 
&c. ;  (14)  two  cheese  fairs  at  Atherstone  and  Chipping 
Norton ;  with  innumerable  other  fairs,  besides  weekly 
markets  for  all  sorts  of  goods,  as  well  our  own  as  of  foreign 
growth." 

1  Rogers,  Econ.  Intf.rp.,  p.  283. 

3  Postlethwaite.  Diet,  of  Trade  and  Commerce  (ed.  1774),  s.  v.  fair. 


i42  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§   88.  The  Fairs  of  Winchester  and  Stourbridge. 

Fairs  were  held  in  every  part  of  the  country  at  various 
times  of  the  year.  Thus  there  was  a  fair  at  Leeds,1  which 
for  several  centuries  served  as  a  centre  where  the  wool- 
growers  of  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire  met  English  and 
foreign  merchants  from  Hull  and  other  eastern  ports,  and 
sold  them  the  raw  material  that  was  to  be  worked  up  in 
the  looms  of  Flanders.  But  there  were  a  few  great  fairs 
that  eclipsed  all  others  in  magnitude  and  importance,  and 
of  these  two  deserve  special  mention,  those  at  Winchester 
and  Stourbridge.  (1.)  That  at  Winchester  was  founded  in 
the  reign  of  William  Rufus,  who  granted  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester  leave  to  hold  a  fair  on  St  Giles'  Hill  for  one 
day  in  the  year.2  Henry  II.,  however,  granted  a  charter 
for  a  fair  of  sixteen  days.  It  was  mainly,  though  by  no 
means  entirely,  for  wool  and  woollen  goods.  During  this 
time  the  great  common  was  covered  with  booths  and  tents, 
and  divided  into  streets  called  after  the  name  of  the  goods 
sold  therein,  as,  e.g.,  "  The  Drapery,"  "  The  Pottery,"  "  The 
Spicery."  Tolls  were  levied  on  every  bridge  and  roadway 
to  the  fair,  and  brought  in  a  large  revenue  to  the  Bishop. 
The  fair  was  of  importance  till  the  fourteenth  century,  for 
in  the  Vision  of  Peres  the  Plowman,  Covetousness  tells 
how 

"  To  Wye 3  and  to  Winchester  I  went  to  the  fair." 4 

But  it  declined  from  the  time  of  Edward  III.,  chiefly 
owing  to  the  fact  that  the  woollen  trade  of  Norwich  and 
other  eastern  towns  had  become  far  more  important,  while 
on  the  other  hand  Southampton  was  found  to  be  a  more 
convenient  spot  for  the  Venetian5  traders'  fleet  to  do  business. 
(2.)  Stourbridge  Fair. — But  the  greatest  of  all  English 
fairs,  and  that  which  kept  its  reputation  and  importance 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  62. 

2Kitchin,  Winchester  (Historic  Towns),  pp.  63,  161,  and  Ashley,  Econ. 
Hist.,  I.  ii.  p.  100. 

3  Probably  Weyhill  in  Hampshire. 

4  For  a  very  full  account  of  the  Fair  see  Warton's  long  note  on  this  line 
in  his  History  of  English  Poetry,  %  viii. 

6  Below,  p.  225. 


TOWNS,  INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,  FAIRS     143 

the  longest,  was  the  Fair  of  Stourbridge,  near  Cambridge.1 
It  was  of  European  renown,  and  lasted  three  weeks,  being 
opened  on  the  18th  of  September.2  Its  importance  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  within  easy  reach  of  the  ports 
of  the  east  coast,  such  as  Lynn,  Colchester,  and  Blakeney, 
which  at  that  time  were  very  accessible  and  much  fre- 
quented.8 Hither  came  the  Venetian  and  Genoese  merchants, 
with  stores  of  Eastern  produce — silks  and  velvets,  cotton, 
and  precious  stones.  The  Flemish  merchants  brought 
the  fine  linens  and  cloths  of  Bruges,  Liege,  Ghent,  and 
other  manufacturing  towns.  Frenchmen  and  Spaniards 
were  present  with  their  wines  ;  Norwegian  sailors  with  tar 
and  pitch  ;  and  the  mighty  traders  of  the  Hansa  towns  ex- 
posed for  sale  furs  and  amber  for  the  rich,  iron  and  copper 
for  the  farmers,  and  flax  for  the  housewives,  while  homely 
fustian,  buckram,  wax,  herrings,  and  canvas  mingled  in- 
congruously in  their  booths  with  strange  far-off  Eastern 
spices  and  ornaments.  And  in  return  the  English  farmers 
— or  traders  on  their  behalf — carried  to  the  fair  hundreds 
of  huge  wool-sacks,  wherewith  to  clothe  the  nations  of 
Europe,  or  barley  for  the  Flemish  breweries,  with  corn 
and  horses  and  cattle  also.  Lead  was  brought  from  the 
mines  of  Derbyshire,  and  tin  from  Cornwall  ;  even  some 
iron  from  Sussex,  but  this  was  accounted  inferior  to  the 
imported  metal.  All  these  wares  were,  as  at  Winchester, 
exposed  in  stalls  and  tents  in  long  streets,  some  named 
after  the  various  nations  that  congregated  there,  and  others 
after  the  kind  of  goods  on  sale.  This  vast  fair  lasted  down 
to  the  eighteenth  century  in  unabated  vigour,  and  was  at 
that  time  described  by  Daniel  Defoe,  in  a  work  now  easily 
accessible  to  all,4  which  contains  a  most  interesting  descrip- 

1  This  Stourbridge  or  Sturbridge  is  now  almost  in  Cambridge  itself,  the 
relics  of  the  fair  being  held  in  a  field  near  Barnwell,  about  a  mile  and  a 
half  from  the  city.     ID  ancient  times  it  was  very  easy  for  merchants  to 
come  up  the  river  Ouse  in  barges  or  light  boats,  as  water-transport  was 
much  more  used  then  than  now,  and  even  the  sea-going  ships  were  very 
light  craft.     Probably  a  Flemish  merchant  would  find  no  difficulty  in  sail- 
ing all  the  way  from  Antwerp  to  Cambridge  in  a  light  ship. 

2  The    description    which   follows  is    based  on   Rogers,    Hist.    Agrw... 
i.  141-143.  'Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  124. 

•In  his  Tour  through  the  Eastern  Counties  (1722) ;  Tour,  i.  91,  or  p.  164 
in  Cassell's  National  Library  Edition. 


144  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

tion  of  all  the  proceedings  of  this  busy  month.  It  is  not 
much  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago  that  the  Lancashire 
merchants  alone  used  to  send  their  goods  to  Stourbridge 
upon  a  thousand  pack  horses,1  but  now  the  pack-horses  and 
fairs  have  gone  and  the  telegraph  and  railway  have  taken 
their  place. 

§  89.    English  Mediaeval  Ports. 

In  the  last  paragraph  mention  was  made  of  the  east  coast 
having  ports  of  great  prominence  in  this  period.  It  will  be 
convenient  here  to  notice  what  were  the  chief  ports  of  Eng- 
land, and  to  remark  how  few  of  them  have  retained  their 
old  importance.  The  chief  port  was  of  course  London, 
which  has  always  held  an  exceptional  position,  and  the 
other  principal  ports  were  on  the  east  and  south  coast.2 
Southampton  was  from  early  times  the  chief  southern  har- 
bour, and  next  to  it  Dartmouth,  Plymouth,  Sandwich,  and 
Winchelsea,  Weymouth,  Shoreham,  Dover,  and  Margate. 
They  were  connected  with  the  trade  in  French  and  Spanish 
goods.  On  the  western  coast  Bristol  was  almost  the  only 
port  much  frequented,  being  the  centre  and  harbour  for 
the  western  fisheries,  and  also  a  place  of  export  for  hides 
and  the  cloth  manufactures  of  the  western  towns.  In  the 
fifteenth  century  Bristol  fishermen  penetrated  through  the 
Hebrides  to  the  Shetland  and  Orkney  Islands  and  to  the 
northern  fisheries,  where  they  found  that  the  Scarborough 
men  had  preceded  them.3  On  the  eastern  coast,  indeed, 
Scarborough  was  one  of  the  most  enterprising  ports.4  Boston, 
Hull,  Lynn,  Harwich,  Yarmouth,  and  Colchester  were  also 
very  flourishing,  and  were  concerned  in  the  Flemish  and 
Baltic  trade.5  Further  north  Newcastle  was  the  centre  for 
the  coasting  trade  in  coal,6  and  Berwick  was  a  fisherman's 
harbour.  But  the  southern  and  eastern  ports  were  the 
most  frequented,  as  being  suitable  to  the  light  and  shallow 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  55. 

2  Cf.  Cunningham,  i.  258 ;  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  122. 

3  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  124. 

4  For  the  making  of  a  pier  there,  cf.  Statute  37  Hen.  VIII.,  c.  14. 
6  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  124.  6  Ib. 


TOWNS,   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,  FAIRS     145 

craft  that  did  a  coasting  trade,  or  ran  across  to  the  Con- 
tinent in  smooth  weather. 

The  extent  of  piracy  was,  however,  a  great  drawback  to 
the  prosecution  of  trade  by  sea,  and  formed  a  danger  which 
in  these  days  we  can  only  inadequately  realise.1  Organised 
bands  of  pirates,  called  the  "  Rovers  of  the  Sea,"  ravaged 
our  coasts  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VI.2  It  was  quite  a  com- 
mon occurrence  for  Scarborough  to  be  attacked  by  Scotch, 
French,  and  Flemish  pirates 3 ;  and  even  large  towns  like 
London  and  Norwich  made  plans  of  defence  against  possible 
attacks  from  such  enemies.4  Merchant  vessels  had  to  sail 
together  in  fleets  for  the  sake  of  security ;  both  Benry  IV. 
and  Henry  VI.  empowered  merchants  in  the  coast  towns 
to  organise  defensive  schemes  5 ;  and  the  protection  of  mer- 
chant shipping  also  occupied  the  attention  of  Henry  VIII.6 
In  fact,  for  many  centuries  piracy  was  the  curse  of  our 
maritime  trade. 

§  9  0.   The  Temporary  Decay  of  Manufacturing  Towns. 

We  have  now  noticed  the  chief  markets,  fairs,  ports,  and 
manufacturing  towns  of  mediaeval  England,  and  it  will  be 
seen  that  commercial  prosperity  was  certainly  developing. 
So,  too,  were  home  manufacturing  industries,  but  their 
growth  brought  about  a  curious  effect  in  the  decay  of  certain 
towns,  and  the  rise  of  industrial  villages  in  rural  districts. 
To  the  decay  of  towns  we  find  frequent  reference  in  the 
Statutes  of  Henry  VI.,  Henry  VII.,  and  his  successor,  i.e., 
from  1490  or  1500  onwards.  This  decay  was  due  to 
several  causes,  among  others  to  the  heavy  taxation  caused 
by  wars  with  France,7  to  the  growth  of  sheep-farming 
mentioned  above,  and  also  to  the  fact  that  the  industrial 
disabilities  imposed  upon  dwellers  in  towns,  in  consequence 

1  Of.  The  Paslon  Letters,  i.  1141 

2  Rot.  ParL,  iv.  350  (42),  376  (29).  »  Rot.  Parl.,  iii.  162  (40). 
4  Denton,  Fifteenth  Century,  pp.  87,  89. 

8  Rymer,  Foedera,  viii.  438,  439,  455.  a  /&.,  xiii.  326. 

7  In  1433  Parliament  in  voting  a  tenth  and  fifteenth  had  to  remit  £4000 
to  poor  towns,  among  which  Yarmouth  and  Lincoln  are  noted.  Rot.  Parl., 
iv.  425.  Cf.  also  R.  P.,  v.  5  and  v.  37  for  other  remissions.  For  other 
evidences  of  decay  see  Rot.  Parl. ,  vi.  390,  438,  and  514 ;  Statutes  27  Hon. 
VIII.,  c.  1  ;  32  Hen.  VIII.,  P.  18,  and  others. 

K 


146  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

of  the  corporate  privileges  of  the  gilds,  now  far  exceeded  the 
advantages  of  residence  there.  The  days  of  usefulness  for 
the  gilds  had  gone  past ;  their  restrictions,  especially  as  to 
apprentices  and  journeymen,1  were  now  felt  only  to  cramp 
the  rising  manufacturing  industries.  Hence  we  find  the 
manufacturers  of  the  Tudor  period  were  leaving  the  towns 
and  seeking  open  villages  instead,  where  they  could  develope 
their  trade  free  from  the  vexatious  restrictions  of  old- 
fashioned  corporations.  Of  course  laws  were  passed  to 
check  this  tendency,  and  to  confine  particular  industries  to 
particular  towns.  Thus,  in  Norfolk,  no  one  was  to  "  dye, 
shear,  or  calendar  cloth  "  anywhere  but  in  the  town  of  Nor- 
wich 2 ;  no  one  in  the  northern  counties  was  to  make 
"  worsted  coverlets  "  except  in  York.3 

§  91.   Growth  of  Industrial  Villages.      The  Germs  of  the 
Modern  Factory  System. 

Such  protective  enactments  were,  however,  as  protective 
enactments  must  generally  be,  utterly  in  vain.  Henry  VII. 
tried  4  to  remedy  the  supposed  evil  by  limiting  the  privi- 
leges of  interference  of  the  gilds  in  causing  their  ordin- 
ances to  be  first  approved  by  the  Chancellor  or  Justices  ; 
but  even  this  step  was  useless.  Manufactures  were  slowly 
and  surely  transferred  to  country  villages,5  and  in  several 
industries  a  kind  of  modern  factory  system  can  be  traced 
at  this  time.  Master  manufacturers,  weary  of  municipal 
and  gild-made  restrictions,  organised  in  country  places  little 
communities  solely  for  industrial  purposes,  and  so  arranged 
as  to  afford  greater  scope  for  the  combination  and  division 
of  labour.8  The  system  of  apprenticeship  was  a  powerful 
element  in  this  scheme,  and  supplied  ready  labour  for  these 
small  factories.  The  goods  were  made  not  as  formerly  only 

1  Of.  Statute  28  Hen.  VHL,  c.  5. 

2  Cf.  the  5  Hen.  VIII.,  c.  4;  14  and  15  Hen.  VIII.,  c.  3;  and  26  Hen. 
VIII. ,  c.  16. 

8  34  and  35  Hen.  VIII.,  c.  10.  4  19  Hen.  VII.,  c.  7. 

5  Mrs  Green,  Town  Life,  ii.  88,  says  that  this  removal  was  in  search  of 
water-power  (e.g.,  in  Yorkshire  and  Gloucestershire).     But  a  more  power- 
ful reason  was  the  tyranny  of  the  gilds ;  Gross,  Gild  Merchant,  i.  52. 

6  Cf  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  p.  75,  and  Gross,  u.  s. 


TOWNS,   INDUSTRIAL  VILLAGES,  FAIRS     147 

for  local  use,  but  for  the  purposes  of  trade  and  profit 
throughout  the  kingdom.  The  master  was  bound  to  his 
workmen  rather  more  closely  than  the  mill-owner  of  the 
present  day  to  his  "  hands,"  for  the  spirit  of  personal 
sympathy  and  obligation  still  survived  in  these  small  labour 
communities,  nor  was  there  any  wide  social  gulf  fixed  between 
master  and  man.1  But  the  germs  of  the  modern  system 
were  there ;  for  this  new  system  was  not  that  of  mere 
cottage  industry,  as  had  been  the  rule  in  previous  periods, 
but  a  system  of  congregated  labour  organised  upon  a 
capitalistic  basis  by  one  man — the  organiser,  head,  and 
owner  of  the  industrial  village — the  master  clothier. 

It  is,  perhaps,  interesting  to  note  in  this  place  the 
exemplification  of  the  four  systems  or  stages  through  which 
manufacturing  industry  usually  passes.2  They  may  be 
called — (1)  The  family  system,  under  which  each  worker 
produces  separately,  aided  only  by  his  wife  and  children  ; 
(2)  the  system  of  production  under  the  supervision  and 
arrangements  of  gilds,  as  we  have  already  seen,  and 
where  small  "  masters  "  employ  a  few  men  to  work  with 
them  as  journeymen  and  apprentices,  while  they  as  manu- 
facturers sell  their  own  goods  to  the  public ;  (3)  the 
domestic  system,  which  is  much  the  same  as  the  one 
previous,  except  that  the  master  manufacturer  is  no  longer 
a  merchant  to  the  public,8  but  simply  produces,  on  a  large 
scale,  for  purchase  by  dealers  ;  and  lastly  (4)  we  have  the 
factory  system  of  modern  times,  which  is  familiar  to  all. 
Now  the  growth  of  the  domestic  system  and  of  the  great 
master  clothiers  may  be  dated  from  the  middle  of  the 
fourteenth  century,4  and  it  extended  through  the  fifteenth  to 
the  eighteenth  century.6  We  see  now  clothiers  in  a  large 
way  of  business  who  buy  the  wool,  cause  it  to  be  spun, 
dyed,  and  finished,  and  then  sell  it  to  drapers  or  merchants, 
who  retail  it  to  the  public.6  The  great  sheep  farmers  were 
often  clothiers,  and  made  up  into  cloth  the  wool  they  grew.7 

Among  these  famous  "master  clothiers"  we  read  of  men  like 

1  Cf.  Ashley,  Woollen  Industry,  p.  74. 

2  Cf.  Held,  Zur  socialen  Geschickte  England'!,  541  sq. 

*  Ashley,  Woollen  Indnnlry,  p.  73.  *  lb.t  81. 

6  /&.,  73.  •  /&.,  81.  7  76.,  80. 


148  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

John  Winchcombe,  or  "  Jack  of  Newbury,"  as  he  was  called, 
of  whom  it  is  recorded  that  a  hundred  looms  always  worked 
in  his  house,1  and  who  was  rich  enough  to  send  a  hundred  of 
his  journeymen  to  Flodden  Field  in  1513.2  His  kerseys 
were  famous  all  over  Europe.3  It  was  from  communities 
such  as  these  that  the  villages  of  Manchester,  Bolton,  Leeds, 
Halifax,  and  Bury  took  their  rise,  and  afterwards  developed 
into  the  great  factory  towns  of  to-day.  But  these  work- 
shops, large  though  they  seemed  then,  were  utterly  insig- 
nificant compared  with  the  huge  factories  of  modern  times, 
where  the  workmen  are  numbered  in  thousands,  and  are  to 
the  capitalist-employer,  or  joint-stock  company  that  owns 
the  mill,  merely  a  mass  of  human  machines,  more  intelli- 
gent though  not  so  durable  as  other  machines,  and  possessed 
of  an  unpleasant  tendency  to  go  out  "  on  strike,"  for  reasons 
that  usually  appear  to  their  employer  insufficient  and  sub- 
versive of  the  whole  industrial  system.  However,  the  in- 
dustrial system  is  not  subverted,  though  the  workmen  can 
hardly  be  said  to  be  upon  the  same  pleasant  footing  with 
their  employers  as  they  used  to  be  in  the  old  industrial 
village.  But  even  in  those  days  things  did  not  always  go 
smoothly,  and  there  are  traces  4  of  the  existence  of  a  very 
badly  paid  class  of  workmen  in  manufacturing  towns. 

1  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  69.    In  1549  the  English  envoy  at 
Antwerp  advises  the  Protector,  Somerset,  to  send  to  Antwerp  for  sale  a 
thousand  pieces  of  "  Winchcombe's  kersies." 

2  Bischoff,  Woollen  and  W orated  Manufacture,  i.  55. 

3  Burnley,  ut  .inpra,  p.  69. 

4  Mrs  Green,  Town  Life,  ii.  101.     The  wages  were  only  one  penny  a  day, 
which  was  low  even  for  those  times. 


CHAPTER    XI 

THE    GREAT   PLAGUE   AND    ITS    ECONOMIC    EFFECTS 

§  92.  Material  Progress  of  the  Country. 

IN  the  preceding  chapters  we  have  attempted  to  give  an 
idea  of  the  state  of  industry  and  commerce  in  England  in 
the  Middle  Ages.  We  now  come  to  a  most  important 
landmark  in  the  history  of  the  social  and  industrial  con- 
dition of  the  people — viz.,  the  Great  Plague  of  1348  and 
subsequent  years.  Almost  two  centuries  had  elapsed  since 
the  death  of  Stephen  (1154)  and  the  cessation  of  those 
great  civil  conflicts  which  harried  England  in  his  reign. 
These  two  centuries  had  witnessed  on  the  whole  a  con- 
tinuous growth  of  material  prosperity.  The  wealth  of  the 
country  had  increased  ;  the  towns  had  developed,  and  their 
development  was  partly  the  effect  and  partly  the  cause  of 
the  growth  of  a  prosperous  mercantile  and  industrial  middle 
class,  who  regulated  their  own  affairs  in  their  gilds,  and  also 
had  a  voice  in  municipal  management.  No  doubt  it  was 
true  that  in  the  fourteenth  century  municipal  life  was  still 
on  a  small  scale,1  but  much  progress  had  been  made  since 
the  twelfth  century.  Already  it  was  a  great  advantage  to 
be  a  "  burgher,"  for  the  towns  opened  up  to  the  artisan  and 
shopkeeper  a  way  to  take  their  place  among  people  of  privi- 
lege.2 But  the  country  at  large  was  still  mainly  devoted  to 
agricultural  and  pastoral  pursuits,  and  the  mass  of  the 
people  were  engaged  in  tilling  the  ground  or  feeding  cattle. 
The  mass  of  the  people,  too,  were  now  better  fed  and  better 
clothed  than  those  of  a  similar  class  on  the  Continent,  and 
though  there  were  social  discontents  at  intervals,  there  was 
nothing  in  England  so  terrible  and  so  outrageous  as  the 
"  Jacquerie  "  revolt  in  France.  The  industrial  factor,  more- 
over, was  making  itself  more  and  more  felt  in  national  and 

'Mrs  Green,  Town  Life,  i.  13.  2/b.,  i.  181. 

M9 


ISO  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

political  life,  for  industrial  questions  assumed  a  hitherto 
unsuspected  importance  when  a  large  proportion  of  the 
House  of  Commons  was  formed  of  burghers  directly 
interested  in  trade  and  manufactures.1 

§  93.  Social  Changes.     The  Villeins  and   Wage-paid 
Labourers. 

Besides  the  growth  of  material  prosperity  in  these  two 
centuries,  we  find  that  the  commutation  of  villeinage 
services  into  money  payments  to  the  lord  of  the  manor — a 
tendency  frequently  commented  upon — had  been  growing 
apace.2  This  commutation  had  been  going  on  for  a  long 
time,  in  fact,  ever  since  the  Conquest,  if  not  before,  and  the 
villeins  had  in  many  cases  freed  themselves  not  only  from 
labour  dues,  but  from  the  vexatious  customary  fines  or 
"  amercements  "  which  they  had  to  pay  to  the  lord  of  the 
manor  on  certain  social  occasions — such  as  the  marriage  of 
a  daughter,  or  the  education  of  a  son  for  the  Church.3  But 
of  course  this  freedom  was  not  complete,  though  it  is  im- 
portant to  notice  its  growth,  for  we  shall  see  that  it  formed 
the  occasion  of  a  great  class  struggle  some  years  after  the 
Great  Plague. 

There  is  another  feature  which  is  also  of  importance,  and 
which  had  come  more  and  more  into  prominence  during  the 
past  two  centuries.  I  refer  to  the  increase  in  the  numbers 
of  those  who  lived  upon  the  labour  of  their  hands,  and  were 
employed  and  paid  wages  like  labourers  of  the  present  day. 
It  has  been  mentioned  before  that  they  arose  from  the 
cottar  class,  from  the  small  tenants  and  landless  cottagers,4 
who  had  not  enough  land  to  occupy  their  whole  time,  and 
who  were  therefore  ready  to  sell  their  labour  to  an 
employer.  These  two  features — the  commutation  of  labour- 
dues  for  money  payments  and  the  rise  of  a  wage-paid 
labouring  class — are  closely  connected,  for  it  was  natural 
that,  when  the  lord  of  a  manor  had  agreed  to  receive 
money  from  his  tenants  in  villeinage  instead  of  labour,  he 

1  Mrs  Green,  Town  Life,  i.  72.         2  Ashley,  Earn.  Hist.,  II.  ii.  265,  267. 

3  The  ordination  of  villeins  had  become  so  common  that  the  constitutions 
of  Clarendon  were  inclined  to  restrict  it.  Cf.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  I.  ch.  xi. 
p.  431  ;  and  Const.  Clar.,  16.  4  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  ii.  p.  267. 


THE  GREAT  PLAGUE  151 

should  have  to  obtain  other  labour  from  elsewhere  and  pay 
for  it  in  the  money  thus  received  by  commutation.  The 
tendency  of  these  social  changes  was  greatly  in  favour  of 
the  villeins,  whose  social  condition  had  steadily  improved,1 
and  whose  tenancy  in  villeinage  was  fast  losing  its  originally 
servile  character.  Neither  were  the  villeins,  whether  com- 
paratively well-to-do  yeomen  or  agricultural  labourers,  so 
much  bound  to  the  manor  as  formerly,  for  in  proportion  as 
their  labour  services  were  no  longer  necessary,  their  lord 
would  let  them  leave  the  manor  and  seek  employment,  or 
take  up  some  manufacturing  industry,  elsewhere.  It  had 
always  been  possible  for  the  villeins  or  serfs  to  do  this  on 
payment  of  a  small  fine  (capitagium),2  and  it  is  certain  that, 
as  money- payments  became  increasingly  the  fashion,  the 
lord  would  not  object  to  receiving  this  further  payment, 
unless  perchance  he  required  a  good  deal  of  labour  to  be 
done  upon  his  own  land. 

§  94.    The  Famine  and  the  Plague. 

The  position  of  the  labouring  class  had  been  further  im- 
proved by  the  effects  of  the  famines  which  occurred  in  the 
early  years  of  the  fourteenth  century.3  Of  course  they  suf- 
fered great  hardships,  and  their  numbers  were  considerably 
thinned,  but  at  the  same  time  this  loss  of  life  and  diminu- 
tion in  their  numbers  caused  their  services  to  become  more 
valuable  in  proportion  to  their  scarcity,  and  they  gained  a 
rise  of  some  20  per  cent,  in  wages.4  From  this  date  till 
the  coming  of  the  Great  Plague,  some  thirty  years  later, 
they  and  the  rest  of  the  English  people  enjoyed  a  period  of 
great  prosperity.5  It  was  on  the  whole  a  "  merry  England" 
on  which  the  Great  Plague  suddenly  broke.  The  prosperity 
of  the  people  was  reflected  in  the  splendour  and  brilliancy 
of  the  court  and  aristocracy,  while  the  national  pride  had 
been  increased  by  the  recent  capture  of  Calais  (1347),  and 
by  the  other  successes  in  the  French  war,6  which  brought 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  p.  454. 

*  Bracton,  De  Leg.  (ed.  Twiss),  ch.  x.  /.  6b  p.  49. 

3  Cf.  Stowe,  Annals,  for  1314  and  1315  A.D.  ;  and  Rogers,  Six  Centuries, 
p.  217.  'Rogers,  ib.,p.  218.  "76.,  219 

.  "Green,  History  of  English  People,  i.  429. 


152  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

not  only  glory  but  occasionally  wealth,  in  the  shape  of 
heavy  ransoms.  But  in  1348  the  prosperity  and  pride  of 
the  nation  was  overwhelmed  with  gloom.  The  Great 
Plague  came  with  sudden  and  mysterious  steps  from  Asia 
to  Italy,  and  thence  to  Western  Europe  and  England, 
carried  some  say  by  travelling  merchants,  or  borne  with  its 
infection  on  the  wings  of  the  wind.  It  arrived  in  England 
at  the  two  great  ports  of  Bristol  and  Southampton  x  in 
August  1348,  and  thence  spread  all  over  the  land.  Its 
ravages  were  frightful.  Whole  districts  were  depopulated, 
and  about  one-third  of  the  people  perished.2  Norwich  and 
London,  being  busy  and  crowded  towns,  suffered  especially 
from  the  pestilence,  aud  though  the  numbers  of  the  dead 
have  been  grossly  exaggerated  by  the  panic  of  contem- 
poraries and  the  credulity  of  modern  historians,3  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  loss  of  life  was  enormous.4  The 
plague  fell  alike  upon  the  dwellers  in  the  towns,  with  their 
filthy,  undrained  streets,5  and  upon  the  labourers  working  in 
the  open  fields  amid  the  fresh  air  and  the  sunshine.  The 
same  fate  came  to  all.  "The  fell  mortality  came  upon  them, 
and  the  sudden  and  awful  cruelty  of  death  winnowed  them."6 

§  95.   The  Effects  of  the  Plague  on  Wages. 

The  most  immediate  consequence  of  the  Plague  was  a 
marked  scarcity  in  the  number  of  labourers  available  ;7  for 

1  Henry  of  Knighton's  Chronicle,  ii.  p.  61,  ed.  Lumby. 

2  Rogers   (Six  Centuries,    p.  223)  thinks  one-third  died ;    Cunningham 
(English  Industry,  i.  304)  thinks  nearly  half ;  Denton  (England  in  Fifteenth 
Century,  p.  98)  more  than  half. 

3  It  was  asserted  by  the  fourteenth  century  chroniclers,  and  has  often 
been  repeated  since,  that  nearly  60,000  people  died  in  Norwich  alone. 
Green  (i.  429)  says  ' '  thousands  of  people  "  died  at  Norwich.    As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  whole  county  of  Norfolk,  including  that  city,  hardly  contained 
30,000  people.     Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  223. 

4  Cf.  Jessop,  Coming  oj  the  Friars,  p.  193,  who  shows  that  half  the  parish 
priests  of  certain  districts  died  during  that  year.     The  Chronicle  of  St 
Allan's  alone  records  (ii.  369)  the  death  of  more  than  forty-seven  monks. 

B  Cf.  Denton,  Fifteenth  Century,  103. 

6  This  wonderfully  vivid  sentence  is  from  Henry  of  Knighton's  Chronicle, 
u.  «.,  ii.  p.  63. 

7  "  There  was  such  a  want  of  servants  in  work  of  all  kinds  that  one  would 
scarcely  believe  that  in  times  past  there  had  beczi  such  a  lack.''     Henry  of 
Ivnighton's  Chronicle,  u.  «.,  ii.  p.  64. 


THE  GREAT  PLAGUE  153 

beiug  of  the  poorest  class  they  naturally  succumbed  more 
readily  to  famine  and  sickness.  This  scarcity  of  labour 
naturally  resulted  in  higher  wages.  The  landowners  began 
to  fear  that  their  lands  would  not  be  cultivated  properly, 
and  were  compelled  to  buy  labour  at  higher  prices  than 
would  have  been  given  at  a  time  when  the  necessity  of  the 
labourer  to  the  capitalist  was  more  obscured.  Hence  the 
wages  of  labourers  rose  far  above  the  customary  rates.  In 
harvest-work,1  for  example,  the  rise  was  nearly  60  per  cent, 
and  what  is  more,  it  remained  so  for  a  long  period ;  while 
the  rise  in  agricultural  wages  generally  was  50  per  cent.2 
So  it  was  also  in  the  case  of  artisans'  wages,  in  the  case  of 
carpenters,  masons,  and  others.3  It  seems  that  the  upper 
classes  and  employers  of  that  day  very  strongly  objected  to 
paying  high  wages,  as  they  naturally  do.  The  king  him- 
self felt  deeply  upon  the  point.  Without  waiting  for 
Parliament  to  meet,  Edward  III.  issued  a  proclamation4 
ordering  that  no  man  should  either  demand  or  pay  the 
higher  rate  of  wages,  but  should  abide  by  the  old  rate. 
He  forbade  labourers  to  leave  the  land  to  which  they  were 
attached,  and  assigned  heavy  penalties  to  the  runaways. 
Parliament  assembled  in  1350  and  eagerly  ratified  this 
proclamation,  in  the  laws  known  as  the  Statutes  of 
Labourers.6  But  the  demand  for  labour  was  so  great 
that  such  legislative  endeavours  to  prevent  its  proper 
payment  were  fortunately  ineffective.  Eunaways  not  only 
found  shelter,  but  also  good  employment  and  high  wages.0 
Parliament  fulminated  its  threats  in  vain,  and  in  vain 
increased  its  penalties  by  a  later7  statute  of  1360,  order- 
ing those  who  asked  more  than  the  old  wages  to  be  im- 
prisoned, and,  if  they  were  fugitives,  to  be  branded  with 
hot  irons.  For  once  the  labourer  was  able  to  meet  the 
capitalist  on  equal  terms.  Moreover,  the  effects  of  the 
Plague  were  not  limited  to  those  occasioned  by  the  great 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  234.  2  Ib.,  p.  237.  3  Ib.,  234-237. 

4  On  the  18th  of  June  1349  (23  Ed.  III.);   cf.  Rymer,  Foedera,  III.  i. 
198,  who  apparently  places  it  a  year  too  late. 
8Th<   '.'.I  ivl.  III.,  stat.  ii.  c.  1,  and  later  31  Ed.  III.,  stat.  i.  c.  6,  and 

III.,  cc.  9,  10,  11. 
8  Knighton's  Chronicle,  ut  sufira,  p.  64.          7  34  Ed.  III.,  cc.  9,  10,  11. 


154  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

visitation  of  1348,  for  there  were  two  or  three  other 
outbreaks  of  pestilence  in  subsequent  years.1  Thus  the 
scarcity  of  labourers  was  felt  more  and  more  keenly  by 
their  former  employers,  and  the  landowners  naturally  did 
their  best  to  compel  them  to  work.2  The  class  of  free 
labourers  and  tenants  who  had  commuted  their  services  for 
money  payments  was  oppressed,  and  "  the  ingenuity  of  the 
lawyers  who  were  employed  as  stewards  on  each  manor  was 
exercised  in  trying  to  restore  to  the  landowners  that  cus- 
tomary labour  whose  loss  was  now  severely  felt."  3  Former 
exemptions  and  manumissions  were  often  cancelled,  and 
labour  services  again  demanded  from  the  villeins.4  The 
result  was  inevitably  a  gradual  union  of  labourers  and 
tenants  of  all  classes  against  landowners  and  employers — 
the  beginnings,  in  fact,  of  a  social  struggle,  in  which  we 
recognise  the  unfortunate  modern  tendency  of  "a  hostile 
confrontation  of  labour  and  capital."  Combinations  and 
confederacies  of  labourers  became  frequent,5  and  the  strife 
grew  more  and  more  bitter,  till  the  crisis  came  at  last,  and 
open  revolt  took  place.  "  The  difficulties  of  the  manorial 
lords  would  be  renewed  with  every  subsequent  visitation  of 
the  Plague,  and  the  pressure  on  villeins  to  render  actual 
service  would  become  more  severe,  until  at  last  it  resulted 
in  the  general  outbreak  of  the  peasants  in  1381."6  Nor 
were  the  social  troubles  thus  caused  in  any  great  degree 
diminished  by  the  successes  of  Edward  III.  and  the  Black 
Prince  in  France,  or  even  by  the  conclusion  of  peace  at 
Bretigny  (1360).  Indeed,  it  must  be  obvious  to  anyone 
who  considers  how  wars  are  paid  for,  that  military  success, 
unless  it  is  a  great  deal  more  productive  than  was  that  of 
Edward  III.,  really  only  makes  matters  worse,  owing  to  the 
financial  burdens  which  it  imposes  upon  the  people.  And 

1  In  1361  and  1369.     Annals  of  England  (Parker),  pp.  196,  197. 

2  Thus,  the  penalties  are  far  more  severe  in  the  34  Ed.  III.,  c.  9,  10,  11, 
than  in  previous  statutes. 

3  Green,  History,  i.  432. 

4  Cf.  Stubbs,  Const,  Hist.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  455. 

6  The  villeins  "gather  themselves  together  in  great  routs,  and  agree  by 
each  confederacy  that  everyone  shall  aid  other  to  resist  their  lords,"  &c., 
&c.  Stat.  1  Rich.  II.,  c.  6. 

6  Cunningham,  Growth  oj  Industry,  i.  357. 


THE  GREAT  PLAGUE  155 

as  a  matter  of  fact,  misery  and  discontent  continued,  even 
after  the  Peace  of  Bretigny,  to  increase  day  by  day.1 

§  96.  Prices  of  Provisions. 

We  must  stop,  however,  to  note  the  more  economic 
effects  of  the  Black  Death.  Now,  although  there  was  a 
great  rise  in  the  price  of  labour,  the  price  of  the  labourers' 
food  did  not  rise  in  proportion.  The  price  of  provisions, 
indeed,  was  but  little  affected,2  for  food  did  not  then  re- 
quire much  manual  labour  in  its  production,  and  hence  the 
rise  of  wages  would  not  be  much  felt  here.  What  did 
rise  was  the  price  of  all  articles  that  required  much  labour 
in  their  production,  or  the  cost  of  which  depended  entirely 
upon  human  labour.  The  price  of  fish,  for  instance,  is 
determined  almost  entirely  by  the  cost  of  the  fisherman's 
labour,  and  the  cost  of  transit.  Consequently  we  should 
under  these  circumstances  expect  a  great  rise  in  the  price 
of  fish,8  and  such  indeed  was  the  case.  So,  too,  there  was 
an  enormous  increase  in  the  prices  4  of  tiles,  wheels,  canvas, 
lead,  iron-work,  and  all  agricultural  materials,  these  being 
articles  whose  value  depends  chiefly  upon  the  amount  of 
labour  spent  over  them,  and  upon  the  cost  of  that  labour. 
Hence,  both  peasant  and  artisan  gained  higher  wages,  while 
the  cost  of  living  remained  for  them  much  the  same  ;  while 
those  who  suffered  most  were  the  owners  of  large  estates, 
who  had  to  pay  more  for  the  labour  which  worked  these 
estates,  and  more  too  for  the  implements  used  in  working 
them.  It  has,  however,  been  pointed  out,6  on  the  other 
hand — and  with  some  truth — that  the  lords  of  the  manors 
must  have  gained  a  great  deal,  in  the  years  during  and 
immediately  after  the  Plague,  from  the  fees  of  "  heriots  "  6 

1  Green,  History,  i.  438. 

2  Grain,  meat,  poultry,  etc. ,  retain  much  the  same  prices  as  before  the 
Plague,  or  are  only  a  little  dearer.     Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  239. 

8/&.,240.  4  76.,  238. 

8  By  Jessop,  The  Slack  Death  in  E.  Anglia,  in  The  Coming  of  the  Friars, 
p.  255,  who  also  thinks  that  the  rise  in  wages  had  begun  before  the  Plague, 
and  was  merely  accelerated  by  it. 

8  The  "  heriot  was  a  payment  from  "a  dead  man  to  his  lord";  the 
"relief  "  was  paid  by  the  son  before  he  could  succeed  to  his  father's  lands. 
See  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  i.  pp.  261  and  24  note,  157. 


156  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

and  "  reliefs "  which  they  received  consequent  upon  so 
many  tenants'  holdings  changing  hands  through  death. 
But  any  sums  of  money  thus  gained  came  of  course  only 
from  a  transitory  condition  of  affairs,  while  the  rise  of 
wages  and  (in  some  cases)  of  prices  was  more  permanent. 
We  may,  however,  legitimately  suspect,  as  an  inference 
from  modern  cases,  that  the  lords  of  the  manors  and  the 
employers  made  the  most  of  their  hardships,  in  the  hopes 
that  arrears  of  taxation  might  be  lightened  by  Parliament.1 

§  9  7.  Effects  of  the  Plague  upon  the  Landowners. 

The  fact  that  the  larger  landowners  found  the  cost  of 
working  their  land  doubled  or  even  trebled  caused  im- 
portant economic  changes.  Before  the  Plague  the  cost  of 
harvesting  upon  a  certain  estate,  quoted  by  Professor  Rogers,2 
was  £3,  13s.  9d.  ;  afterwards  it  rose  to  £12,  19s.  lOd. 
Moreover,  the  landlord  had  to  consent  to  receive  lower 
rents,3  for  many  tenants  could  not  work  their  farms  profit- 
ably with  the  old  rents  and  the  new  prices  for  labour  and 
implements.  A.nd,  as  rent  is  paid  out  of  the  profits  of 
agriculture,  it  became  obvious  that  smaller  profits  must 
mean  lower  rents.  Now,  in  this  state  of  things  the  land- 
lord had  two  courses  open  to  him.  He  could  turn  off  the 
tenant  and  cultivate  all  his  land  himself,  or  he  could  try 
to  exist  upon  the  smaller  income  gained  from  lower  rents. 
It  was  obviously  impossible  for  him  to  cultivate  all  his  land 
himself,  for  he  would  have  to  employ  a  large  number  of 
bailiffs  for  his  various  manors,  and  trust  to  their  honesty 
to  do  their  best  for  him.  He  therefore  decided  to  allow 
his  tenants  to  pay  him  a  smaller  rent.  What  is  more,  he 
in  many  cases  decided  under  the  circumstances  to  give  up 
farming  altogether,  and  to  let  even  the  lands  which  he  had 
reserved  for  his  own  cultivation.4  The  landlords,  in  fact, 

1  Jessop,  ut  supra,  p.  256.  2  Six  Centuries,  p.  241. 

3  In  the  words  of  Henry  of  Knighton's  Chronicle  (ut  supra,  ii.  p.  65),  the 
lords  had  "either  entirely  to  free  them,  or  give  them  an  easier  tenure  at 
a  small  rent,  so  that  homes  should  not  be  everywhere  irrecoverably  ruined 
and  the  land  everywhere  remain  entirely  uncultivated." 

4  This  became  even  more  frequent  in  the  next  century — the  fifteenth. 
Stubbs,  Const.  Hist. ,  iii.  552.     The  new  tenants  were  known  as  firmarii 


THE  GREAT  PLAGUE  157 

had  not,  apparently,  either  the  ability  or  the  inclination  to 
superintend  agriculture  under  these  changed  conditions,  and 
ceased  trying  to  work  their  land  themselves.  One  great 
result  of  the  Plague,  therefore,  was  that  landlords  to  a 
large  extent  gave  up  capitalist  farming  upon  their  own 
account,  and  let  their  tenants  cultivate  the  soil  upon  the 
modern  tenant-farming  method.  There  was,  in  fact,  a  com- 
plete change  introduced  into  the  agricultural  system,  the 
foundations  of  the  modern  arrangement  of  comparatively 
large  farms,1  held  by  tenants  and  not  by  small  owners, 
were  laid,  and  the  present  distinction  between  the  farmer 
and  the  labourer  was  more  clearly  established.2 

§  98.  Large  and  Small  Holdings:  the  Yeomen. 

This  change  in  the  agricultural  situation  also  operated  in 
other  ways.  Concurrently  with  the  greater  development  of 
the  modern  system  of  tenant  farmers,  there  is  reason  to 
believe 8  that  the  Plague  caused  in  many  places  the  con- 
centration of  several  estates  into  one,  in  cases  where  numer- 
ous deaths  had  resulted  in  the  succession  of  a  single  heir  to 
the  estates  of  his  stricken  relatives,  and  thus  the  tendency 
towards  the  combination  of  large  estates  in  few  lands  was 
strengthened,  and  the  great  landowner  became  more  clearly 
distinguished  from  his  neighbours.  "  The  gentry  became 
richer  and  their  estates  larger."  But  at  the  same  time 
there  was  also  an  undoubted  tendency  towards  the  multi- 
plication of  small  holdings,  both  those  in  the  hands  of 
tenants  and  of  owners,  so  that  the  class  of  peasant-farmers 
and  yeomen  greatly  increased  in  numbers.4 

The  circumstances  of  the  time  favoured  these,  for  the 
rise  in  the  price  of  labour  was  not  so  severely  felt  by  this 
class,  since  they  could  and  did  use  the  unpaid  labour  of 
their  families  upon  their  holdings.5  Then,  when  they  had 

(i.e.,  those  who  paid  a  firma  or  fixed  rent),  "fermors,"  or  "farmers." 
Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  ii.  267. 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hint.,  I.  ch.  xvi.  400 ;  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.  and  Price*, 
i.  667.  a  Ib. 

8  Jessop,  The  Black  Death  in  East  Anglia,  in  The.  Coming  of  the  Friar*, 
p.  251. 

4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  241.  6  76. 


158  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

tided  over  the  immediate  results  of  the  Plague,  they  took 
larger  holdings  as  they  grew  richer.  They  were  helped  in 
this  by  the  stock  and  land  lease  system  already  referred 
to  (p.  114),  which  gave  them  the  use  of  a  larger  quantity 
of  agricultural  capital  than  they  could  otherwise  have  com- 
manded. But  when  the  tenant-farmer's  wealth  increased 
he  found  himself  able,  as  a  rule,  to  keep  his  own  stock. 

§  99.   The  Statute  of  Quia  Evnptores. 

It  also  would  appear  that,  independently  of  the  effects  of 
the  Plague,  the  number  of  substantial  yeomanry  (some  of 
whom  helped  later  to  swell  the  numbers  of  the  country 
gentry)  was  increasing  from  another  cause.  Little  more 
than  half  a  century  before  the  Black  Death,  the  Crown  had 
thought  it  necessary  to  introduce  the  well-known  Statute 
of  Quia  Emptores.  This  enactment1  was  intended  to 
prevent  the  practice  of  "  subinfeudation,"  whereby  the 
tenants  of  the  greater  lords  received  other  and  smaller 
tenants  on  condition  of  their  rendering  to  them  feudal 
services  similar  to  those  which  they  themselves  rendered  to 
their  original  lords.  The  Statute  of  Quia  Emptores 2 
purposed  to  check  this  process  by  providing  that  in  any 
case  of  alienation  of  land  to  a  sub-tenant,  this  sub-tenant 
should  hold  it,  not  of  the  other  tenant,  but  of  the  superior 
lord  or  real  owner.  The  intention  undoubtedly  was  to 
prevent  the  alienation  of  land,  but,  as  so  often  happens 
with  legislative  enactments,  the  actual  result  was  of  a 
directly  opposite  character.  The  tenant  who,  previously, 
had  been  compelled  to  retain  in  any  case  at  least  so  much 
of  his  holding  as  enabled  him  to  fulfil  his  feudal  obligations 
to  his  overlord,  was  now  able  (by  a  process  similar  to  the 
modern  sale  of  "  tenant  right ")  to  transfer  both  land  and 
services  to  new  holders.3  The  estates  thus  transferred, 
however  large  or  small  they  might  be,  were  now  held 
directly  of  the  Crown  or  superior  lord  ;  and  the  class  of 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hut.,  II.   ch.  xv.  p.  180;  Taswell  Langmead,  English 
Const.  Hist.,  pp.  62,  138,  228. 

2  The  king  (Edward  I. )  enacted  this  ' '  by  the  instance  of  his  magnates 
only  "  (ad  instantiam  magnatum  regni  sui)  on  July  8th,  1290  (18  Ed.  I.,  c.  1). 

3  Green,  History,  i.  336. 


THE  GREAT  PLAGUE  159 

small  gentry  and  freeholders  grew  steadily  from  this  time 
both  in  numbers  and  importance.  The  Plague  assisted  the 
tendency  of  the  Statute,  and  an  important  social  change 
was  thereby  wrought.  "  The  facilities  thus  given  to  the 
alienation  and  subdivision  of  lands ;  the  transition  of  the 
serf  into  the  copyholder,  and  of  the  copyholder  by  redemp- 
tion of  his  services  into  a  freeholder ;  the  rise  of  a  new 
class  of  '  farmers,'  as  the  lords  ceased  to  till  their  demesne 
by  means  of  bailiffs,  and  adopted  instead  the  practice  of 
leasing  it  at  a  rent  or  '  farm  '  (firma)  to  one  of  the  '  cus- 
tomary '  tenants ;  the  general  increase  of  wealth  which 
was  telling  on  the  social  position,  even  of  those  who  still 
remained  in  villeinage — all  undid  more  and  more  the  earlier 
process  which  had  degraded  the  free  ceorl  of  the  English 
Conquest  into  the  villein  of  the  Norman  Conquest,  and 
covered  the  land  with  a  population  of  yeomen,  some  free- 
holders, some  with  services  that  every  day  became  less 
weighty  and  already  left  them  virtually  free."1  The 
yeomanry  of  England  formed  henceforth  for  several  cen- 
turies an  important  factor  in  national  life,  and  their  decline 
was  a  national  misfortune.2 

§  100.   The  Emancipation  of  the  Villeins. 

In  fact,  the  gradual  amelioration  of  the  conditions  of 
villeinage  or  serfage  received  a  forcible  impetus  from  the 
Great  Plague.  Those  villeins  who  had  not  already  become 
free  tenants,  and  especially  those  who  lived  on  wages,3 
shared  in  the  advantages  now  gained  by  all  who  had  labour 
to  sell.  Their  labour  was  more  valuable,  and  they  were 
able  with  their  higher  wages  to  buy  from  their  lord  a  com- 
mutation of  those  exactions  which  interfered  with  their 
personal  freedom  of  action,4  with  their  right  to  sell  their 
labour  to  other  employers,  or  with  their  endeavours  to 
reach  a  better  social  position.  Serfage  or  villeinage  gradu- 

1  The  extract,  which  gives  a  good  summary  of  the  conclusions  of  other 
writers,  is  from  Green,  History  of  the  English  People,  i.  420. 

2  For  this  decline,  see  below,  p.  276. 
s  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  242. 

*  "  Money  payments  were  substituted   for  service."      Stubbs,    Const, 
iat.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  p.  454. 


160  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

ally  became  practically  a  mere  form,1  though  the  land- 
owners, supported  by  the  lawyers,2  interposed  many  ob- 
stacles in  the  path  of  emancipation,  and  a  great  Revolt 
was  necessary  to  enable  the  villeins  to  show  their  power. 
This  revolt  and  its  result  must  now  engage  our  atten- 
tion.3 

1  Stubbs,   Const-  Hist.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  p.  254.     "It  was  by  a  mere  legal 
form  that  the  villein  was  described  as  less  than  free." 

2  Ib.t  p.  455.     The  lawyers  seem  to  have  been  against  the  freedom  of 
villeins  ever  since  the  Norman  Conquest.     Cf.  Vinogradoff,  Villeinage  in 
England,  pp.  134,  150,  &c.,  &c. 

8  Of  course  villeinage  did  not  die  out  all  at  once  ;  nor  would  it  be  neces- 
sary for  me  to  say  so,  were  it  not  for  the  perversity  of  certain  critics,  who 
imagine  that,  because  I  attach  great  importance  to  the  Plague  and  the 
Peasant's  Revolt,  I  maintain  that  villeinage  ceased  suddenly.  For  sur- 
vivals, see  later,  p.  171. 


CHAPTER    XII 
THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF  issi,  AND  THE  SUBSEQUENT 

CONDITION   OF   THE   WORKING    CLASSES 

§  101.   The  Place  of  the  Revolt  in  English  History. 

THE  Revolt  to  which  allusion  has  just  been  made  has 
been  described  by  one  of  our  greatest  and  most  careful  his- 
torians1 as  "  one  of  the  most  portentous  phenomena  to  be 
found  in  the  whole  of  our  history  " ;  nor  has  the  criticism  2 
of  those  who  have  endeavoured  to  minimise  its  results  suc- 
ceeded in  depriving  it  of  its  historical  importance.  "  The 
extent  of  the  area  over  which  it  spread,  the  extraordinary 
rapidity  with  which  intelligence  and  communication  passed 
between  the  different  sections  of  the  revolt,  the  variety  of 
cries  and  causes  which  combined  to  produce  it,  the  mystery 
that  pervades  its  organisation,  its  sudden  collapse  and  its 
indirect  permanent  results,  give  it  a  singular  importance 
both  constitutionally  and  socially."3  It  is  therefore  of 
interest  to  note  the  various  influences  which  produced  such 
an  uprising,  and  to  examine  the  various  grievances  which 
the  villeins  of  the  fourteenth  century  endeavoured  to  redress 
by  such  revolutionary  methods.  The  revolt  was  undoubtedly 
serious,  and  would  certainly  have  had  far  more  sanguinary 
consequences,  had  it  occurred  later  than  it  actually  did. 
Fortunately  the  working  classes  of  England  were  not  so 
utterly  ground  down  beneath  the  heel  of  their  superiors  as 
was  the  case  across  the  Channel,  and  they  resented  their 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  p.  449. 

2  Cf.  Ashley's  criticism  of  J.  E.  Thorold  Rogers  in  The  Political  Science 
Quarterly,  VoL  IV.,  No.  3,  September  1889.     Also  Cunningham,  Growth 
of  English  Industry,  Vol.  I.  p.  360.      But  these  historians  practically 
admit  all  that  Rogers  really  wished  to  prove,   as  my    quotations  show. 
See  below,  p.  172. 

*  Stubbs,  \a  ante,  p.  450. 

L  l6' 


162  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

injuries  sooner,  otherwise  England  might  have  witnessed 
a  few  centuries  later  that  volcanic  upheaval  of  a  slow 
peasantry,  enraged  by  ages  of  seigneurial  oppression,  which 
burst  with  such  terrific  and  long-contained  violence  over 
eighteenth  century  France.  Fortunately,  also,  the  upper 
classes  of  England  seem  to  have  taken  warning  in  time 
from  what  happened  in  1381,  and  did  not  in  actual  fact, 
whatever  they  may  have  said  and  thought,  proceed  to  such 
foolish  extremities  as  would  have  infallibly  endangered  both 
their  property  and  their  position. 

§  102.  New  Social  Doctrines. 

By  no  means  the  least  important  among  the  effects  of  the 
Great  Plague  was  the  spirit  of  independence  which  it  helped 
to  raise  in  the  breasts  of  the  villeins  and  labourers,  more 
especially  as  they  now  gained  some  consciousness  of  the 
power  of  labour,  and  of  its  value  as  a  prime  necessity  in 
the  economic  life  of  the  nation.1  There  was,  indeed,  a 
revolutionary  spirit  in  the  air  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  and  the  villeins  could  not  help  breath- 
ing it.  The  social  teaching  of  the  author  of  Piers  the 
Plowman,  with  his  outspoken  denunciation  of  those  who 
are  called  the  upper  classes,2  the  bold  religious  preaching  of 
Wiklif  and  the  wandering  friars,  and  the  marked  political 
assertion  of  the  rights  of  Parliament  by  the  "  Good  Parlia- 
ment"3 of  1376,  were  all  manifestations  of  this  spirit.  It 
was  natural,  too,  that,  feeling  their  power  as  they  did,  the 
villeins  should  become  restive  when  they  heard  from  the 
followers  of  Wiklif  that,  as  it  was  lawful  to  withdraw  tithes 
from  priests  who  lived  in  sin,  so  "  servants  and  tenants  may 
withdraw  their  services  and  rents  from  their  lords  that  live 
openly  a  cursed  life."  4 

1  Cf.  Gower,   Vox   Clamantis,   in  Stubbs,  u.  s.,   ii.    p.    454,  where  he 
describes  hired  labourers  of  the  period  of  the  Revolt,  and  accuses  them 
of  wishing  to  have  too  much  of  their  own  way. 

2  See  below,  p.  167.    I  have  treated  this  more  at  length  in  English  Social 
Reformers,  pp.  5-25. 

9  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  pp.  428-433.     "It  marked  the  climax 
of  a  long  rising  excitement,"  p.  428. 
4  Wiklif,  English  Works  (E.E.T.S.),  p.  229,  Of  Lords  and  Servants. 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       163 

§  103.   The  Coming  of  the  Friars.      WiJdif. 

Such,  indeed,  was  the  teaching  that  Wiklif  promulgated, 
and  it  was  carried  throughout  all  England  by  that  great 
association  of  wandering  friars  which  he  founded  under  the 
title  of  the  "  poor  priests."  l  These  men  were  like  the 
mendicant  friars  who  had  come  to  England  a  century  before  2 
to  work  in  the  poorer  parts  of  the  English  towns ;  though 
Wiklif  s  priests  generally  wandered  out 3  into  the  isolated  and 
remote  country  villages,  and  spread  abroad  the  independent 
doctrines  and  the  revolutionary  spirit  of  the  times.  Spend- 
ing their  lives  in  moving  about  among  the  "  upland  folk," 
as  the  country  people  were  called,  clad  in  coarse,  undyed, 
brown  woollen  garments,  they  won  the  confidence  of  the 
peasants,  and  what  is  more,  helped  them  to  combine  in 
very  effectual  unions.4  They  served  as  messengers  between 
those  in  different  parts  of  the  country,  having  passwords 
and  a  secret  language  of  their  own.5  Their  preaching  was 
similar  to  that  of  the  celebrated  priest  of  Kent,  John  Ball, 
who  for  twenty  years  before  the  great  rising  (1360-80) 
openly  spoke  words  like  these — "Good  people,  things  will 
never  be  well  in  England  so  long  as  there  be  villeins  and 
gentlemen.  By  what  right  are  they  whom  we  call  lords 
greater  than  we  ?  On  what  grounds  have  they  deserved  it  ? 
Why  do  they  hold  us  in  serfage  ?  They  have  leisure  and 
fine  houses :  we  have  pain  and  labour,  and  the  wind  and 
rain  in  the  fields.  And  yet  it  is  of  us  and  our  toil  that 
these  men  hold  their  estate."  These  searching  questions  as 
to  the  rights  of  the  lords,  and  the  bold  but  true  statement 

1  Green,  History,  i.  474. 

2  The  Black  Friars  of  Dominic  came  in  1221,  and  the  Grey  Friars  of 
Francis  in  1224.     Jessop,  Coming  of  the  Friars,  32,  34.     The  Dominicans 
were   "trained  men  of  education  addressing  themselves  mainly  to  the 
educated  classes  " ;  the  Franciscans  appealed  to  the  lowest  and  poorest 
class,  and  worked  in  the  slums  of  the  towns  of  those  days.     76.,  28,  21. 

8  Friars  and  "  poor  priests  "  were  found  everywhere  ;  cf.  Wylie,  England 
under  Henry  IV.,  ch.  xvi. 

4  These  unions  or  confederacies  are  complained  of  and  prohibited 
(uselessly)  by  the  Statute  1  Rich.  II.,  c.  6  (1377). 

8  See  the  message  of  John  Ball  (himself,  of  course,  a  priest)  to  the  com- 
mons of  Essex,  quoted  in  Skeat's  Preface  to  Pier*  the  Plowman,  p.  xxvi., 
and  Green's  History,  i.  p.  476. 


1 64  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

that  it  was  the  villeins  and  labouring  classes  who  supported 
— and  paid  for — their  high  estate,  came  closely  home  to 
the  peasants.  They  were  influenced  also  by  the  indepen- 
dent religious  views  of  the  Lollards,1  which  encouraged  inde- 
pendent thought  in  other  ways.  And  this  independence  of 
social  and  religious  tenets  was  hardly  calculated  to  make 
the  villeins  bear  with  equanimity  the  exactions  of  their 
lords  after  the  Great  Plague. 

§  104.   The  Renewed  Exactions  of  the  Landlords. 

For  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Great  Plague  did 
not  emancipate  the  villeins,  nor  cause  the  landowners  to 
give  up  farming  on  their  own  account  immediately.  The 
process,  of  course,  took  a  few  years,  and  in  these  few  years 
the  landowners  made  desperate  efforts  to  avoid  paying 
higher  wages  than  formerly  for  labour.  As  it  had  now 
become  costly,  they  insisted  more  severely  upon  the  per- 
formance by  their  tenants  of  such  labour  dues  as  were  not 
yet  commuted  for  money  payments.2  They  even  tried  to 
make  those  tenants  who  had  emerged  from  a  condition  of 
villeinage  to  a  free  tenancy  return  back  to  villeinage  again,3 
with  all  its  old  labour  dues  and  casual  services.  If  a  man 
could  not  prove  by  legal  documentary  evidence  that  he 
held  his  land  in  a  free  tenancy,  the  landowner  might  pre- 
tend he  was  a  villein  tenant,  and  subject  to  all  a  villein's 
services,  although  these  services  might  long  ago  have  been 
commuted  for  a  money  rent  without  any  legal  formality.4 

1  Note  the  complaints  against  Lollard  teaching  in  the  Statute  2  Henry 
V.,  I.  c.  7. 

2  As   Stubbs    puts    it  —  "  The    villeins  ignored  the  Statute  [i.e.,   of 
labourers],  and  the  lords  fell  back  upon  their  demesne  rights  over  the 
villeins"  (Const.  Hist.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  p.  455).     The  point  of  view  of  the 
lords  is  expressed,  plaintively  enough,  in  the  Statute  1  Rich.  II.,  c.  6 — 
' '  The  villeins  and  land-tenants  in  villeinage  who  owe  services  and  customs 
to  the  said  lords  have  now  lately  withdrawn  and  do  daily  withdraw  their 
services  and  customs,"  &c. ,  &c. 

3  "  The  old  rolls  were  searched,  the  pedigree  of  the  labourer  was  tested 
like  the  pedigree  of  the  peer,  and  there  was  a  dread  of  worse  things  com- 
ing "  (Stubbs,  ut  ante,  p.  455). 

4  This  was  no  doubt  the  cause  of  the  particular  animosity  shown  against 
manorial  documents,  which  in  many  cases  the  villeins  tried  to  burn ;  cf. 
Walsingham,  Hist.  Ancjl.,  i.  455. 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       165 

There  is  much  reason  to  believe,  moreover,  that  they 
abused  their  power  of  inflicting  "  amercements,"  or  fines, 
upon  their  tenants  in  the  manor  courts  for  trivial  breaches 
of  duty.1  So  at  least  Wiklif  2  and  the  author  of  Piers  the 
Plowman3  tell  us.  The  villeins  naturally  resisted  this 
attempt  to  make  a  retrograde  movement,  which  would  force 
them  back  into  the  old  bondage  from  which  they  had 
redeemed  themselves  ;  4  the  free  tenants  5  supported  them, 
for  they  knew  their  turn  would  come  next  if  the  serfs 
failed  ;  and  the  labouring  classes  in  the  towns — many  of 
whom  had  kinsmen  in  the  country,  or  had  been  villeins 
once  themselves — eagerly  joined  the  movement6  also,  in 
hopes  of  bettering  their  position  generally. 

§  105.  Social  and  Political  Questions. 

Meanwhile,  other  social  and  political  grievances  contri- 
buted to  the  general  uneasiness.  The  state  of  the  kingdom, 
instead  of  allaying,  merely  increased  the  undercurrent  of 
discontent  among  the  lower  classes.  The  Statutes  of 
Labourers,7  by  their  endeavours  to  reduce  the  rates  of 
wages  to  the  old  level  of  the  days  before  the  Plague,  or  to 
keep  the  multitudes  of  wandering  labourers  in  search  of 
work  tied  down  to  their  own  particular  localities,  only 
succeeded  in  widening  the  gulf  and  increasing  the  bitterness 
between  rich  and  poor.  Many  of  Edward's  French  con- 
quests had  been  lost  since  the  Peace  of  Bretigny  ;  the  Plague 
had  come  again  with  renewed  devastations ;  the  Parliament 

1  Cf.  Ashley,  in  his  essay  on  Thorold  Rogers  in  the  Political  Science 
Quarterly,  Vol.  IV.,  No.  3,  p.  399,  who  mentions  this  very  point,  though 
he  criticises  severely  Rogers'  view  of  the  case.     Also  c/.  Ashley,  Econ. 
Hist.,  II.  ii.  265. 

2  Wiklif,  English   Works  (E.E.T.8.),   Of  Lards  and  Servants,  p.  233— 
' '  Lords  many  times  do  wrongs  to  poor  men   by   unreasonable  amerce- 
ments." 

8  Piers  Plowman,  Passus  C.,  ix.  1.  37  (Skeat's  ed.,  i.  p.  197),  "  When  ye 
amercyn  any  man  let  mercy  be  taxer." 

4  "  With  the  teaching  of  Wiklif  in  the  air,  it  was  natural  that  the 
villeins  should  become  restive."  Ashley,  Pol.  Science  Quarterly,  IV.,  No.  3, 
p.  399. 

8  "  The  irritation  spread  to  the  whole  class,  whether  bond  or  free." 
Stubba,  Const.  Hist.,  II.  xvi.  455. 

«  Ib.,  p.  456.  ?  Above,  p.  163. 


1 66  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

had  unwisely  (1376  and  1379)  sought  to  enforce  the 
Statutes  of  Labourers  still  more  stringently ; x  the  king 
himself  was  sinking  into  a  premature  old  age,  the  victim  of 
his  own  profligacy  and  of  the  designing  ministers  and 
avowed  mistresses  who  surrounded  him.  His  debts  and 
the  expenses  of  his  French  wars  had  become  a  fatal  burden 
upon  his  own  country.  His  continual  levies  of  tenths  and 
fifteenths  upon  the  produce  of  the  kingdom,  especially  upon 
wool,  and  his  taxation  of  exports  and  imports,  were  seriously 
draining  the  resources  of  the  nation.2  To  meet  the  expendi- 
ture on  war  abroad,  and  on  luxury  at  the  court,  a  poll-tax  of 
a  groat  a  head  was  ordained  among  the  last  acts  of  the  dying 
king,3  who  passed  away  at  last  in  June  1377,  robbed  of 
his  rings  even  on  his  death-bed  by  his  mistress,  Alice 
Ferrers.4 

Richard  II.,  who  succeeded  to  the  throne,  was  a  child  of 
only  eleven  years  of  age.  The  war  with  France  was  still 
going  on,  bringing  continual  disasters  and  defeats  to  the 
English  troops  even  on  our  own  shores ; 5  and  at  last,  to 
meet  its  expenses,  Parliament,  meeting  at  Northampton  on 
November  5th,  1380,  granted  the  famous  poll-tax  which 
was  the  immediate  cause  of  the  Peasants'  Revolt.6  The 
tax  was  now  made  12d.  instead  of  a  groat  (4d.),  as  it  had 
been  previously,7  and  was  levied  on  every  person  above 
fifteen  years  of  age.8  Although  it  was  graduated,  its  lowest 
limit  was  yet  three  times  the  previous  tax,  and  it  was  col- 
lected also  in  the  most  odious  manner,  for  the  troops  who 
had  just  returned  from  France,  after  the  conclusion  of  peace 
in  January  1381,  were  clamorous  for  pay,  and,  to  meet 

1  Above,  p.  153. 

2  Rot.  ParL,  ii.  310 ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  II.  xvi.  424. 

8  Sot.  Parl. ,  ii.  364.     It  was  granted  by  Parliament  on  February  22,  1377. 
4  Green,  History,  i.  470. 

6  In  July  and  August  1377,  the  French  ravaged  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and 
burned  Hastings  and  Rye,  and  in  August  1380  they  ravaged  the  whole  of 
the  south  coast.    Annals  of  England  (Parker),  sub  anno. 

8  Rot.  Parl,  iii.  88-90. 

7  A  graduated  poll-tax  had  been  granted  in  1379,  the  lowest  tax  being 
a  groat  on  every  person  over  sixteen  years  of  age,  while  earls  paid  £4. 
Rot.  Parl.,  iii.  57,  58. 

8  Prince,  Parallel  History,  i.  659  (ed.  1842) ;  Hume's  History  of  England, 
iii.  6  (ed.  1818). 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       167 

their  demands,  the  ministers  borrowed  a  large  sum  from 
foreign  merchants,  assigning  them  this  tax  in  return,  and 
allowing  them  to  appoint  their  own  collectors.1 

§  106.   The  Mutteringa  of  a  Storm. 

This  new  oppression  brought  the  discontent  of  the  people 
to  a  climax.  But  the  discontent  had  long  been  making 
itself  felt,  and  was  only  waiting  for  a  definite  opportunity  to 
burst  forth  into  flame.  As  we  saw,2  the  poorer  villeins  and 
labourers  had  long  since  banded  together  in  trades  unions 
of  a  secret  sort,  while  the  "  poor  priests "  of  Wiklif  and 
the  "  begging  friars " 3  had  long  been  wandering  from 
village  to  village,  carrying  the  messages  of  the  angry 
peasants  from  one  to  another,  and  preaching  social  reform, 
if  not  social  equality.  Quaint  letters  in  rude  rhyme  passed 
through  the  peasant  ranks — the  voice  of  "  Piers  the  Plow- 
man "  was  making  itself  heard.  Here  is  an  epistle  4  from 
John  Ball,  issued  from  the  prison  into  which  he  had  been 
thrown,  to  the  people  of  Essex — "  John  the  Shepherd, 
sometime  St  Mary's  priest  of  York  and  now  of  Colchester," 
it  ran,  "  greeteth  well  John  Nameless,  and  John  the  Miller, 
and  John  the  Carter,  and  biddeth  them  beware  of  guile 
in  the  town  and  stand  together  in  God's  name  ;  and  he 
biddeth  Piers  the  Plowman  go  to  his  work,  and  chastise 
well  Hob  the  Robber  5 ;  and  take  with  you  John  True-man 
and  all  his  fellows  and  no  more  ;  and  look  sharp  and  go 
ahead  (loke  scharpe  you  to  go  on  heved)  and  no  more." 
Some  rhyme  follows,  and  the  letter  concludes — "  And  so 
biddeth  John  Truman  and  all  his  fellows."  It  is  obvious 
that  this  letter  contains  a  message  clearly  intelligible  to 
those  for  whom  it  was  meant,  but  of  no  meaning  to  others, 
while  the  obscure  references  to  "  Piers  the  Plowman " 
would  be  easily  interpreted  by  the  proper  readers  thereof. 
Another  letter  runs — 

1  The  story  of  the  collectors'  alleged  misbehaviour  is  well  known. 

2  Above,  p.  163.  *  Chron.  Angl.,  p.  312. 
4Quoted  in  Skeat's  Introduction  (p.  xxvi.)  to  Fiera  the  Plowman. 

6  This  probably  meant  that  the  agricultural  labourer  is  to  rise  against 
the  lord  who  was  "robbing"  him  of  his  rights. 


i68  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

"  John  Ball 
Greeteth  you  all. 
And  doth  for  to  understand 
He  hath  rung  your  bell. 
Now  right  and  might  ! 
Will  and  skill  ! 
God  speed  every  dele  !  "  1 

Such  were  the  hidden  messages  and  passwords  that  were 
whispered  from  one  villein  to  another,  or  carried  by  wander- 
ing friars,  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land, 
till  at  length  the  storm  broke,  and  all  at  once,  in  Yorkshire 
and  Lancashire,  in  Suffolk  and  Essex,  in  Kent  and  in 
Devon,  north,  west,  east,  and  south,2  the  peasantry  of 
England  rose  as  one  man  against  their  masters. 

§  107.  The  Storm  Breaks  Out. 

The  simultaneous  nature  of  the  rising  leaves  us  no  doubt 
that  it  was  preconcerted.  The  collectors  of  the  poll-tax 
seem  to  have  been  openly  opposed  first  in  Essex,3  and  when 
Sir  Thomas  Belknap,  a  judge,  was  sent  to  punish  the 
rioters,  he  was  obliged  to  flee  for  his  life.  Almost  at  the 
same  time  a  workman,  named  Wat  or  Walter  the  Tyler,4 
killed  a  collector  who,  it  is  said,  insulted  his  daughter. 

According  to  documents  in  the  Public  Record  Office,  "  a 
cry  was  raised  that  no  tenant  should  do  service  or  custom 
to  the  lords  as  they  had  aforetime  done,"  6  and  immediately 
bands  of  town  workmen  in  some  cases,  and  of  rustics  in 
others,  assembled  together  under  the  leadership  of  men 
with  assumed  names,  such  as  Jack  the  Miller  and  Jack 
Straw.  In  Kent  they  burst  open  the  gaols,  seized  William 
de  Septvanz  the  Sheriff,  and  compelled  him  to  deliver  up 
the  taxation  rolls,  which  were  promptly  burnt.6  But  these 
acts  were  not  the  immediate  object  of  the  villeins.  After 


2  "Far  more  rapidly  than  the  news  could  fly,"  says  Stubbs,  II.  xvi.  450. 

3  Walsingham,  i.  454.     Stubbs,  ut  supra,  457. 

*  It  seems  to  have  been  really  John  Tyler  of  Dartford  who  did  this,  but 
Wat  Tyler  of  Maidstone  is  often  confused  with  him.  Gf.  Stubbs,  p.  456, 
note. 

5  Of.  Annals  of  England  (Parker,  Oxford,  1876),  p.  203. 

0  Arch.  Cant.,  iii.  76. 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       169 

releasing  John  Ball  from  Maidstone  Gaol,  they  proceeded,  as 
all  know,  to  London,  demanding  not  merely  the  abolition  of 
the  unjust  poll-tax,  but  (what  is  significant  as  showing  the 
real  nature  of  the  rising)  also  the  relief  of  the  rural  popula- 
tion from  the  exactions  of  their  lords.1  It  is  significant 
also  to  note  how  many  clergy  were  in  the  ranks  of  the  in- 
surgents, for  in  indictments  made  after  the  rising  2  we  find 
the  chaplain  of  one  church,  the  sacristan  of  another,  and 
the  clerk  of  a  third,  charged  with  heading  mobs  that  sacked 
stewards'  houses  and  burnt  court-rolls.3  The  mass  of 
peasants  and  others  assembled  at  Blackheath  on  June  12th, 
1381,  entered  London  the  following  day,  then  seized  the 
Tower,  and  murdered  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and 
the  King's  Treasurer.  On  the  14th  the  men  of  Essex  met 
Richard  at  Mile  End,  and  on  the  1 5th  the  men  of  Kent 
had  a  conference  with  him  at  Smithfield,  when  their  chief 
leader,  Wat  the  Tyler,  was  slain  by  the  Lord  Mayor  of 
London.4 

The  details  of  those  meetings  are  almost  too  well  known 
to  need  repetition  here.  But  the  demands  of  the  men  of 
Essex  prove  clearly  the  real  origin  of  the  movement.  "  We 
will  that  you  free  us  for  ever,  us  and  our  lands,"  they 
asked,  "  and  that  we  be  never  named  or  held  as  villeins." 
"  I  grant  it,"  said  the  King,  with  regal  diplomacy,  and  the 
peasants  believed  him.5  He  gave  the  same  promise  to  the 
men  of  Kent,  and  it  was  only  after  receiving  his  letters  of 
emancipation  6  that  the  reformers  returned  to  their  homes, 
though  the  rising  was  not  yet  entirely  at  an  end,  for  one 
party  certainly  remained  in  arms  up  to  July  1st.7 

But  the  peasants  learned  very  soon  how  vain  a  thing  it 

1  They  demanded  (1)  abolition  of  bondage,  (2)  a  general  pardon,  (3) 
abolition  of  tolls,  (4)  the  commutation  of  villein  services.  See  Richard 
II. 's  patent  revoking  manumissions;  Rymer,  Foedera,  iv.  216. 

-  Cf.  Annalft,  p.  204 ;  Hot.  ParL,  iii.  108. 

3  These  were  the  records  of  the  manorial  courts  held  by  the  lords  of  the 
manors.     Rot.  ParL,  iii.  116;  Walsingham,  Hist.  Angl.,  i.  456. 

4  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  ii.  p.  458. 

8  Walsingham,  Hint.  Angl.,  i.  459. 

8  "  We  release  you  from  all  bondage."  Walsingham,  i.  466,  467,  and 
</.  473. 

1  Annals  of  Enyland,  p.  204,  note. 


i/o  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

was  to  put  their  trust  in  princes.  Within  a  fortnight  (on 
June  30th)  Richard  issued  a  proclamation  that  all  tenants, 
whether  villeins  or  free,  should  render  all  accustomed 
services  as  heretofore ; l  and  on  July  2nd  he  formally 
annulled  the  charters  of  freedom,2  a  step  that  was  sub- 
sequently sanctioned  by  Parliament  when  it  met  again  on 
November  5th  (5  Richard  II.,  c.  6).  Special  commis- 
sioners were  sent  into  the  country  to  punish  the  insurgents,3 
and  it  would  seem  that  as  many  as  1500  persons  were 
executed  by  their  orders.4  Everywhere  the  peasants  and 
their  leaders  were  put  down  by  the  severest  measures. 
Richard  marched  through  Kent  and  Essex  with  an  army  of 
40,000  men,  ruthlessly  punishing  all  resistance.5  "Villeins 
you  were,"  he  cried,  as  the  men  of  Essex  claimed  from  him 
his  own  royal  promise  ;  "  villeins  you  were,  and  villeins  you 
are.  In  bondage  you  shall  abide,  and  that  not  your  old 
bondage,  but  a  worse  ! " 6  At  St  Alban's  John  Ball  was 
hanged  on  July  loth,7  and  so,  too,  was  another  leader,  one 
Grind-cobbe,  as  he  was  called.  But  as  he  died  Grind- 
cobbe  uttered  the  words,  which,  in  spite  of  king  and  lords, 
at  last  came  true — "  If  I  die,  I  shall  die  for  the  cause  of 
the  freedom  we  have  won,  counting  myself  happy  to  end 
my  life  by  such  a  martyrdom."  8 

§  108.  The  Result  of  the  Bevolt. 

And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  peasants  in  reality  gained 
their  point.  They  had  to  shed  their  own  blood,  but  they 
won  in  the  end.  The  landowners  in  Parliament  certainly 
refused  any  notion  of  compromise  at  first ;  they  even  prayed 
the  King  to  ordain  "that  no  bondman  nor  bondwoman  (i.e., 
no  villein)  shall  place  their  children  at  school,  as  had  been 
done,  so  as  to  advance  their  children  in  the  world  by  their 

1  Rymer,  Foedera,  iv.  126.  2  Ib. 

3  Richard  himself  had  to  interfere  to  repress  their  severity.  Rymer, 
Foed.,  iv.  133. 

*  Annals,  p.  205;  Stubbs,  quoting  Mon.  Evesh.,  p.  33,  says  that  in  all 
7000  insurgents  were  executed. 

5  Green,  History,  i.  484.  6  Walsingham,  Hist.  Angl.,  ii.  18. 

7  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  ii.  p.  452,  note. 

8  Green,  History,  i.  485. 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       171 

going  into  the  church."1  They  even  asked  that  lords  might 
reclaim  villeins  from  the  chartered  towns,2  but  the  king 
had  the  sense  to  refuse  both  petitions.  The  poor  priests, 
unlicensed  preachers,  or  "  Lollards,"  were  ordered  to  be 
arrested  or  held  in  strong  prison  "until  they  justify  them- 
selves according  to  the  law  and  reason  of  Holy  Church."  8 
But  after  the  first  year  or  two,  all  these  efforts  fortunately 
proved  abortive.  Villeinage  rapidly  became  practically 
extinct,  and  commutation  of  labour  services  for  money  rents 
became  more  and  more  common.4  Evidence  of  this  is  seen 
in  the  whole  tone  of  the  writings  of  Fitzherbert,  the  author 
of  a  well-known  work,  "  On  Surveyinge,"  who,  about  1530, 
instead  of  regarding  the  surviving  instances  of  villeinage  as 
quite  the  natural  thing,  laments  over  its  continuance  as  a 
disgrace  to  the  country — a  marvellous  change  of  attitude 
since  the  fourteenth  century.6  Almost  the  last  cases  of 
survival  occurred  under  Elizabeth,6  who  enfranchised  the 
bondmen  on  royal  estates  in  1574,  though  a  few  later 
notices  of  the  custom  appear.  No  doubt  some  traces  of  the 
old  order  remained  for  centuries ;  indeed,  it  would  have 
been  strange  if  such  had  not  been  the  case.  Although,  for 
instance,  the  old  manorial  system  is  long  since  dead,  its 
relics  survive  among  us  to-day,  and  courts  leet  are  still  held 
in  many  places.  Yet  no  one  contends  that  the  manor  sur- 
vives as  in  the  fourteenth  century.  But,  speaking  broadly, 
the  peasants  achieved  their  object ;  the  labours  of  John 
Ball,  Tyler,  and  Grinde-cobbe  were  not  altogether  futile ; 
and  the  century  that  followed  the  Great  Revolt  was,  on 
the  whole,  one  of  considerable  prosperity  for  the  English 
labourer.7 

1  Rot.  Parl ,  iii.  294,  296.  « Ib. 

8 5  Ric.  II.,  at.  2,  c.  5.  4  Stubbs,  Canst.  Hist.,  II.  ch.  xvi.  463. 

8  Cj.  Cunningham,  i.  p.  360,  who,  however,  thinks  villeinage  did  not  die 
out  BO  quickly. 

•Rymer,  Foed.,  xv.  731. 

7  In  this  account  of  the  Peasants'  Revolt  I  find  myself  in  agreement  with 
the  general  conclusions  of  Thorold  Rogers,  though  the  careful  reader  will 
notice  that  none  of  the  references  in  the  footnotes  refer  to  his  works,  but 
are  taken  from  other  authorities.  Some  modern  economic  historians  have 
criticised  (with  more  or  less  severity)  the  conclusions  of  this  eminent 
authority,  but,  curiously  enough,  when  their  own  theories  are  looked  into, 


i/2  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

§  109.   The  Condition  of  the  English  Labourer. 

After  this  great  insurrection  came  a  time  of  considerable 
prosperity  for  the  English  labourer,  and  it  lasted  all 
through  the  fifteenth  century.  Food  was  cheap  and 
abundant ;  wages  were  amply  sufficient.  In  fact,  soon 
after  the  Eevolt  a  statute  of  1388  complains  of  them 
being  "  outrageous  and  excessive."  x  True,  the  employers  of 

they  merely  confirm  those  held  by  Thorold  Rogers,  at  least  in  their  broad 
outlines.  Professor  W.  J.  Ashley  has  an  elaborate  criticism  of  Rogers' 
work  in  general  and  his  theory  of  the  Peasants'  Revolt  in  particular  in  the 
Political  Science  Quarterly,  Vol.  IV.,  No.  3,  and  roundly  accuses  Rogers  of 
belonging  to  the  "  cataclysmic  school"  (p.  400)  of  history,  of  seeking  after 
dramatic  effect  rather  than  absolute  truth,  and  of  not  being  "  guided  by 
the  idea  of  gradual,  reasonable,  undramatic  development "  in  history  (p. 
407).  Unfortunately  for  this  criticism,  however,  human  history,  even  on 
its  economic  side,  refuses  to  be  either  gradual,  undramatic,  or  even  con- 
sistently reasonable.  If  it  were,  it  would  not  be  human,  though  it  might 
be  academic  —  a  dubious  gain.  There  have  been  sudden  and  dramatic 
developments  often  enough,  as  witness  the  discovery  of  the  New  World, 
and  its  conquest  by  the  Spaniards  ;  or  the  rise  of  Napoleon  ;  or  the  very 
dramatic  (not  to  say  theatrical)  French  Revolution.  The  Industrial  Revo- 
lution in  England  was  rightly  called  by  Toynbee  a  revolution  and  not  an 
evolution,  for  it  presents  a  sudden  and  by  no  means  gradual  development. 
And  the  Peasants'  Revolt  was  certainly  one  of  the  "  dramatic  "  developments 
of  our  social  history.  It  is  impossible  to  read  contemporary  documents 
without  noticing  the  important  place  it  took  in  the  minds  of  those  who  lived 
through  it,  short  though  it  was ;  and  I  am  prepared  to  follow  Bishop 
Stubbs  in  his  estimate  of  it  rather  than  attempt  to  minimise  its  importance. 
As  to  the  cause  of  the  revolt  as  set  forth  by  Stubbs  and  Rogers,  Professor 
Ashley  says  (P.  S.  Q.,  p.  399),  "  Certainly  no  evidence  has  yet  been  adduced 
that  can  be  regarded  as  confirming  it."  This  is  utterly  to  ignore  the  words 
of  Wiklif,  "  Piers  the  Plowman,"  and  the  preambles  to  the  statutes  of  the 
day.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  Professor  Ashley  quotes  them  himself, 
and  admits  from  them  practically  all  Rogers'  conclusions  as  to  the  origin 
of  the  Revolt.  Dr  Cunningham  (Growth  of  English  Indiistry,  i.  359-360) 
does  the  same,  and,  of  course,  both  declare  that  the  Revolt  failed.  Dr 
Cunningham  says  that  in  the  fifteenth  century  services  were  still  rendered 
by  villeins  (i.  360),  and  thinks  this  fact  alone  proves  the  failure.  Of  course 
services  continued  to  be  rendered,  but  they  were  on  a  very  different  footing 
than  in  the  days  before  the  Revolt.  From  1381  onwards  we  find  them  no 
longer  flourishing  but  decaying,  and  within  one  hundred  years  they  are 
practically,  and  in  two  hundred  almost  entirely,  extinct.  Considering 
how  many  relics  of  the  old  manorial  system  survive  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  is  it  not  a  little  remarkable  that  villeinage  died  out  so  rapidly  ? 
No  historian  in  his  senses  would  say  that  services  ceased  immediately  after 
the  Revolt,  but  we  need  not  deny  that  from  that  time  forward  they  began 
to  die  out  more  rapidly  than  before. 
1  12  Rich.  II.,  cc.  3-7,  preamble — "The  servants  and  labourers  will  not 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       173 

labour  still  tried,  by  various  petitions  and  Acts,1  to  enforce 
the  Statute  of  Labourers,  but  they  were  practically  unsuc- 
cessful, and  prosperity  seems  to  have  been  progressive  and 
continuous  till  the  days  of  Henry  VIII.  The  wages  of  a 
good  agricultural  labourer,  before  the  Plague,  have  been 
calculated  at  £2,  7s.  lOd.  per  year  as  an  average,2  includ- 
ing the  labour  of  his  wife  and  child ;  after  the  Plague  his 
wages  would  be  £3,  15s.,  and  the  cost  of  his  living 
certainly  not  more  than  £3,  4s.  9d.  An  artisan,  working 
300  days  a  year,  would  get,  say,  £3,  18s.  l|d.  before 
1348,  and  after  that  date  £5,  15s.  7d.,  which  was  so  far 
above  the  cost  of  maintenance  as  to  give  him  a  very  com- 
fortable position.3  By  the  day4  wages  were  for  agricultural 
labourers  4d.  a  day,  and  for  artisans,  6d.  His  working 
day,  too,  was  probably  not  excessive,5  for  although  the 
legal  day  was  one  of  about  twelve  hours 6  for  agricultural 
labourers,  it  is  pretty  certain  that,  as  in  other  cases,  the 
statutes  were  generally  evaded.  Rents  were  low,  and  these 
low  rents  were  one  great  cause  of  the  prosperity  of  the  new 
yeoman  or  tenant  farmer  class  (p.  157)  that  had  arisen 
after  the  collapse  of  the  capitalist  landowners  in  conse- 
quence of  the  Plague — a  class  which  remained  for  at  least 
two  centuries  the  backbone  of  English  agriculture. 

Several  recent  historians,  however,  have  taken  a  view  of 
the  labourer's  life  in  the  fifteenth  century  that  by  no  means 
agrees  with  the  pleasant  condition  of  things  which  the 
statistics  of  wages  seem  to  indicate.  Instead  of  accepting 
the  fifteenth  century  as  an  era  of  great  prosperity,  they  have 
endeavoured  to  paint  from  various  sources  a  very  different 

serve  and  labour  without  outrageous  and  excessive  hire,  and  much  more 
than  hath  been  given  in  any  time  past."  The  Act  then  goes  on  to  fix  wages. 
Surely  this  is  a  sign  of  the  practical  success  of  the  Peasants'  Revolt. 

1  For  example,  7  Henry  IV.,  c.  17  ;  23  Henry  VI.,  c.  12  ;  11  Henry  VII., 
c.  22,  and  others. 

2  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  290,  684,  689,  and  iv.  757.  *  Ib. 
4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  327. 

•"'Rogers  infers  from  various  grounds  (Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  755)  that  the 
working  day  was  of  only  eight  hours,  chiefly  arguing  from  the  heavy  pay- 
ments for  overtime.  Dr  Cunningham  (1-477)  thinks  the  contrary,  and 
quotes  the  Acts  of  11  Hen.  VII,  c.  22,  and  6  Hen.  VUL,  c.  3. 

*  See  the  two  Acts  just  quoted. 


174  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

and  very  gloomy  picture.  When  it  is  pointed  out  that 
wages  were  high  both  for  artisans  and  labourers,  while  the 
prices  of  food  were  particularly  low,  it  is  contended  on  the 
other  hand  that  the  high  wages  were  only  those  paid  by 
the  day,  that  yearly  wages  were  much  lower,  and  that  even 
for  day  labourers  employment  was  not  constant.1  The  bal- 
ance of  advantage  is  said  to  lie  with  the  modern  artisan.2 
If  we  take  the  "  common  servant  in  husbandry,"  it  is  said, 
\ve  find3  he  is  only  paid  20s.  8d.  a  year,  and  his  wife  only 
14s.,  though  their  food  is  provided;  and  even  the  bailiff 
only  gets  26s.  8d.  a  year,  with  5s.  extra  for  clothing,  and 
his  food  as  well.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
statute  which  prescribes  these  rates  is,  of  course,  laying 
down  the  minimum  rates,4  and  there  is  not  the  slightest 
doubt  that  far  higher  wages  were  habitually  paid,  not 
merely  for  the  work  of  a  few  days  or  weeks,  but  for  work 
extending  over  a  whole  year.  This,  at  any  rate,  is  clear 
enough  in  the  case  of  artisans,  for  at  Windsor  in  1408  we 
find  carpenters  getting  6d.  and  5d.  a  day  for  365  days  in 
the  year,5  which  shows  that  they  were  paid  an  annual 
wage  at  a  daily  rate,  even  including  Sundays  and  holidays. 
We  find  similar  high  wages  at  York,  while  at  Oxford  men 
were  paid  full  rates  and  fed  by  the  College  as  well.6  As 
for  agricultural  labourers,  it  must  be  noted  that  the 
majority  of  them  lived  in  their  master's  house,7  when  they 
did  not  happen  to  be  the  sons  of  small  tenants,  or  tenants 
themselves,8  who  had  their  land  to  fall  back  upon.  Those 
who  lived  in  their  master's  house  would  certainly  be  well 
fed  while  there,9  for  food  was  both  abundant  and  cheap. 
Even  the  minimum  basis  of  wages  just  quoted  (20s.  8d. 
per  year)  cannot  be  called  low,  when  we  remember  that  it 
represents  between  £12  and  £13  of  our  money,10  in  addi- 
tion to  good  board  and  lodging.  Many  an  agricultural 

1  Cf.,  e.g.,  Cunningham,  Growth  of  English  Industry,  i.  348,  349. 

2  Ib.,  349.  3  In  the  11  Henry  VII.,  c.  22. 
4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  389.        5  Ib.,  328. 

"  Ib.,  328.  7  Froude,  History  of  England,  i.  p.  5. 

8  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  689,  691.    9  Froude,  History,  i.  21. 

1 '  Taking  the  now  generally  admitted  multiple  of  twelve  to  compare 
prices  of  to-day  with  those  of  the  fifteenth  century  ;  cf.  Rogers,  Six 
Centime*,  p.  539,  172  ;  Froude,  History,  i.  26. 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       175 

labourer  in  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  would 
be  only  too  glad  to  obtain  such  payment.1  Nor  need  we  be 
surprised  that  the  bailiff  only  gets  31s.  8d.  (equivalent  to 
some  £19)  a  year,  always  supposing  that  his  employer  kept 
within  the  statute,  though  this  is  unlikely  ;  for  it  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  Middle  Ages  that  superior  servants  and  work- 
men were  paid  but  little  above  the  average  of  those  whom 
they  superintended.2  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are 
plenty  of  instances  of  bailiffs  getting  far  higher  wages,  such 
as  from  £3  and  £5  to  over  £9  per  annum.3  And  when 
we  come  to  consider  that  the  average  income  of  a  country 
gentleman*  was  only  about  £20  per  annum  in  Henry  VI.'s 
days,  it  is  evident  that  the  bailiff  was  very  well  paid  indeed, 
and  that  there  was  even  no  such  enormous  disproportion 
between  the  effective  incomes  of  the  labourer  and  the  squire 
as  there  is  to-day. 

§  1 1 0.   Purchasing  Power  of  Wages. 

But  it  is  useless  to  mention  the  rates  of  wages  unless  we 
can  estimate  at  the  same  time  their  purchasing  power ;  and 
when  we  do  so,  we  see  that  they  were  amply  sufficient,  even 
taking  the  statutory  rates,  to  purchase  for  the  labourer  and 
artisan  an  abundance  of  good  and  cheap  food.  An  artisan 
earning  5d.  or  6d.  a  day,  or  an  agricultural  labourer  earning 
3d.  or  4d.,5  could  get  plenty  of  bread,  beef,  and  beer  at  very 
low  prices.  For  beef  was  only  £d.  a  pound,  and  mutton 
fd.  ;6  strong  beer  only  Id.  a  gallon,  and  table-beer  a  half- 
penny.7 The  price  of  corn  averaged  a  little  under  6s.  a 
quarter,8  and  other  kinds  of  grain  were  equally  cheap ; 

1  In  Notts  from  £7  to  £16  per  annum  are  wages  quoted  in  Royal  Com- 
mi. won  on  Labour  Report,  Agric.  Labourer,  I.  B.  V.  127. 

2  It  certainly  was  so  with  artisans.     Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  502-504. 

8  See  wages  quoted  from  manorial  accounts  by   Rogers,   Hist.   Agric., 
i.  287,  iv.  119  (where  the  statutory  wages  are  also  mentioned). 

4  This  was  the  income  qualifying  a  country  gentleman  to  be  a  J.P.  by  the 
18  Henry  VI.,  c.  11. 

5  These  wages  are  those  laid  down  by  the  6  Hen.  VIII.,  c.  3,  the  lower 
rates  being  paid  in  the  winter.  8  Stow's  Chronicle,  p.  568. 

7  Assize  of  Brewers,  from  a  MS.  in  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  quoted  by 
Froude,  History,  i.  24. 

8  The  average  from  1260-1400  A.D.  is  5s.  lOjd.  a  quarter  ;  from  1401  to 
1540  it  is  5s.  lljjd.     Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  330. 


i/6  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

chickens  cost  Id.  or  2d.,  and  a  pig  or  goose  only  4d.x  The 
cheapness  of  provisions  is  seen  from  the  fact  that  6cL  or  8d. 
a  week  was  an  ordinary  estimate  for  the  board  of  a  work- 
man,2 and  2d.  a  day  or  Is.  a  week  was  liberal.3  Indeed,  the 
good  food  enjoyed  by  the  "  common  people  "  was  the  wonder 
of  all  foreigners.  "  What  common  folk  in  all  this  world 
may  compare  with  the  commons  of  England  in  riches,  free- 
dom, liberty,  welfare,  and  all  prosperity  ? "  is  the  question 
in  one  of  Henry  VIII. 's  State  papers  ; 4  and  chroniclers  tell 
us  that  the  food  of  "artificers  and  husbandmen  consisteth 
principally  in  beef,  and  such  meat  as  the  butcher  selleth, 
that  is  to  say,  mutton,  veal,  lamb,  pork,  whereof  one  findeth 
great  store  in  the  markets  adjoining  "  ; 6  while  "  souse,  brawn, 
bacon,  fruit,  pies  of  fruit,"  and  "  fowls  of  sundry  sorts  "  were  to 
be  found  in  most  workmen's  homes.6  Surely  it  is  sufficient 
evidence  of  the  prosperity  of  the  working  classes  when  food 
of  this  description  was  so  easily  within  their  reach.  In  fact, 
it  is  pretty  clear  that  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  century 
witnessed  the  beginning,  and  the  fifteenth  century  the  con- 
tinuance, of  an  era  to  which  the  oppressed  labourer  of  later 
times  might  well  look  back  with  admiration  and  regret. 
Holidays  were  frequent,7  and  if  a  man  lost  bis  wages  during 
them,  there  was  generally  plenty  of  extra  work,  well  paid, 
in  harvest  time  8  to  compensate  for  loss  of  time  elsewhere. 
The  Saturday  half-holiday,  lost  subsequently  and  only 
recently  restored,  seems  to  have  been  universal.9  In  the 
leisure  time  thus  falling  to  his  lot,  the  agricultural  labourer 
could  work  upon  the  land  which  then  invariably  went  with 

1  Stafford,  State  of  the  Realm,  quoted  by  Froude,  History,  i.  23. 

2  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  328.  3  76.,  p.  329. 

4  State  Papers,  Henry  VIII.,  Vol.  II.  p.  10. 

5  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  p.  282. 

6  76.     He  adds,  "  in  feasting  it  is  incredible  what  meat  is  consumed  and 
spent."    His  book  was  written  in  the  sixteenth  century,  but  it  shows  that 
the  condition  of  the  working  classes  was  fairly  good  even  then,  after  the 
troubles  of  Henry  VTII.'s  reign,  and  therefore  was  probably  quite  as  good 
in  the  fifteenth  century. 

7  Froude,   History,  i.  28,   reckons  one  day  in  every  twenty ;  and  it  is 
evident  that  sometimes  holidays  were  paid  for.    Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  327. 

8  Mowers  could  then  get  8d.  a  day.     Privy  Purse  Expenses  of  Henry 
VIII.  (Froude,  i.  28). 

9  Mrs  Green,  Town  Lift,  in  the  fifteenth  Century,  ii.  133. 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       177 

his  cottage,  while  in  every  parish  there  were  large  ranges  of 
commons,  waste-land  and  forest,  which  gave  him  fuel  for 
nothing,  where  his  pigs  might  pick  up  mast  and  acorns  or 
his  geese  feed  freely,  and  where,  if  he  had  a  cow,  he  might 
send  her  to  graze.  "  So  important  was  this  privilege 
considered,  that  when  the  commons  began  to  be  largely 
enclosed,  Parliament  insisted  that  the  working-man  should 
not  be  without  some  piece  of  ground  on  which  he  could 
employ  his  own  and  his  family's  industry." l  The  "  allot- 
ments "  of  the  nineteenth  century  labourer,  with  their  some- 
times excessive  rentals,2  are  a  poor  recompense  for  such 
privileges.  In  those  days,  if  contemporary  evidence  goes 
for  anything,  England  was  once  in  reality  "  Merrie  England," 
and  life,  even  if  unrefined,  was  coloured  with  broad,  rosy 
English  health.8 

§  111.  Drawbacks. 

There  were,  however,  of  course,  several  drawbacks  in  this 
pleasant  era,  as  more  than  one  critic  has  lately  told  us.4 
The  ordinary  hardships  of  human  life  were  in  many  respects 
greater  than  they  are  now — disease  was  more  deadly,  and 
the  risks  of  life  more  numerous  ;  but  from  this  very  fact 
the  extremes  of  poverty  and  wealth  were  less  widely  dis- 
tinguished and  less  acutely  felt;  and,  although  it  cannot 
be  asserted  that  people  did  not  occasionally  die  of  want  in 
very  bad  times,  yet  the  grinding  and  hopeless  poverty,  just 
above  the  verge  of  actual  starvation,  so  often  prevalent  in 
the  present  time,  did  not  belong  to  mediaeval  life.  The 
chief  ordinary  hardships  to  be  encountered  were  in  the 
winter,  for,  owing  to  the  absence  of  winter  roots,  stock 
could  not  be  kept  except  in  limited  quantities,5  and  the 

1  By  the  Act  31  Eliz.,  c.  7,  every  cottage  was  to  have/owr  acres  of  land 
attached  to  it.      For  the  points  of  the  above  description,  cf.  Froude, 
History,  i.  28. 

2  Rents  of  35s.  an  acre,  22s.  6d.  an  acre,  11s.  for  one  rood,  21s.  for  nearly 
half-an-acre,  are  quoted  in  Statistics  of  Midland  Villages  (1891-2)  in  the 
Economic  Journal,  VoL  III.,  No.  9. 

3  Froude,  History,  i.  46. 

4  Cf.  Denton,  Fifteenth  Century,  105 ;   Jessop,  Coming  of  the  Friars,  89, 
&c.  (who,  however,  seems  to  refer  to  the  thirteenth  century) ;  and  Cunning- 
ham, i.  346,  347.  '  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  78. 

M 


1 78  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

only  meat  procurable  was  that  which  had  been  previously 
salted.1  It  is  certain  that  much  of  mediaeval  disease  is 
traceable  to  the  excessive  use  of  salted  provisions.  The 
houses,  too,  were  rudely  built  of  mud,  clay,  or  even  wattled 
material,  for  brickmaking  was  a  lost  art,  and  stone  was 
only  used  for  the  manor-houses  and  the  dwellings  of  the 
wealthy.2  But  food,  as  we  saw,  was  abundant  and  cheap, 
and  the  cost  of  living  was  not  more  than  one-tenth  of  what 
it  is  at  the  present  day.3  Nor  were  the  houses  quite  so 
poorly  furnished  as  some  would  have  us  think.  Pictures, 
hangings,  cushions,  and  feather  beds  were  not  unknown  in 
the  houses  of  plain  country  parsons  with  a  salary  of  some- 
thing like  £6  a  year.4  It  is  probable  that  even  the  houses 
of  the  peasants  were,  compared  with  the  degree  of  luxury 
and  comfort  then  attainable,  no  worse  furnished  propor- 
tionately than  they  are  now ;  and  anyone  who  has  seen 
Ann  Hathaway's  cottage  at  Stratford-on-Avon  must  admit 
that,  as  buildings,  the  dwellings  of  the  labourer  of  to-day 
are  often  no  improvement  on  those  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
But  two  hardships  there  undoubtedly  were,  which  per- 
haps were  more  severe  in  mediaeval  times  than  now. 
They  were  famine  5  and  plague.  The  accounts  of  mediaeval 
famines  have  no  doubt  been  much  exaggerated,6  and  those 
that  occurred  were  chiefly  local,  but  it  is  obvious  that  when 
means  of  communication  were  less  perfect  than  they  are 
now,  individual  villages  might  often  suffer  severely,  while 
in  other  parts  of  the  country  there  was  plenty.  Yet  after 
all  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  was  any  more  real  scarcity 
than  there  is  to-day ;  for  deaths  from  sheer  starvation  are 
common  enough  among  us  even  now ;  and  against  the 
evidence  of  famine  must  be  set  the  evidence  of  general 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  95.  2  Ib. ,  97. 

3  "  A  penny  in  terms  of  the  labourer's  necessities  must  have  been  nearly 
equal  to  the  present  shilling."     Froude,  History,  i.  26. 

4  See  the  very  valuable  quotation  in  Froude,  History,  i.  41 ,  of  the  furni- 
ture of  the  Parson  of  Aldington,  Kent,  from  an  MS.  in  the  Rolls  House. 
Qf.  also  Stubbs,  Const.  Hint.,  III.  xxi.  555. 

5  See  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  346,  who  quotes  Holinshed  and 
Stow. 

6  This  is  obvious  from  a  comparison  of  prices,  which  rarely  show  such 
variations  as  would  correspond  with  the  terrible  descriptions  of  chroniclers. 


THE  PEASANTS'  REVOLT  OF   1381       179 

plenty  as  being  the  normal  condition  of  existence.  No  one 
would  say  that  famines  occurred  regularly  in  England  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  yet  if  one  merely 
went  by  depositions  at  coroners'  inquests  a  very  good  case 
might  be  made  out  by  a  critic  of  our  civilisation.  On  the 
other  hand,  pestilence1  was  undoubtedly  more  common 
than  now,  and,  of  course,  owing  to  lack  of  medical  skill, 
more  deadly  ;  but  to  talk  of  "  chronic  typhoid  in  the  towns 
and  leprosy  all  over  the  country  "  2  as  the  normal  state  of 
things,  is  to  give  a  totally  wrong  impression  of  the  risks 
of  mediaeval  life.  If  our  forefathers  were  more  exposed  to 
disease,  the  rude  vigour  of  their  constitutions,  and  the 
coarser  texture  of  their  nervous  system,  rendered  them  more 
impervious  to  its  ravages.  Probably,  at  least  in  the  rural 
districts,  the  risks  of  life  were  not  much  greater  than  now, 
and  though  a  great  pestilence  occasionally  swept  off  its 
victims  with  tragic  suddenness,  there  was  probably  not  so 
much  general  ill-health  and  liability  to  death  by  easily 
thrown-off  diseases  as  at  the  present  day. 

1  Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  331,  335-337. 

2  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  347,  uses  these  words.     Against 
them  may  be  put  Rogers'  remark  (Six  Centuries,  i.  331)  that  "  if  abundant 
evidence  as  to  the  rate  of  wages  and  silence  as  to  loss  of  life  [in  manorial 
accounts]  are  to  go  for  anything,  it  did  not  create  a  sensible  void  in  the 
number  of  labourers. " 


CHAPTER    XIII 

THE    CLOSE    OF   THE   MIDDLE   AGES 

§   112.   The  Nobility. 

THE  period  from  the  Peasants'  Revolt  (1381)  to  the  first 
few  years  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  (1509-1548)  presents 
many  interesting  features.  In  it  we  come  to  the  close  of 
mediaeval  life,  and  begin  the  more  modern  history  of  our 
country.  There  are  several  important  changes  going  on, 
yet,  on  the  other  hand,  the  main  aspects  of  social  life 
remain  the  same  ;  for  the  permanence  of  social  features  is 
characteristic  of  mediaeval  times.1  We  may,  therefore,  take 
the  facts  presented  in  the  previous  section  as  giving  us  the 
outlines  of  a  picture  which,  in  all  important  points  at  any 
rate,  lasted  till  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The 
lives  of  the  peasants  and  working  classes  were  probably 
the  same  for  quite  a  century.  But  meanwhile  important 
social  and  economic  changes  were  taking  place. 

In  the  fifteenth  century,  to  take  the  highest  ranks  first, 
the  great  nobles  and  feudal  lords  were  at  the  height  of 
their  power  and  splendour ;  but  their  glory  was  as  that 
of  the  sun  before  it  sinks  suddenly  out  of  sight  amid  a 
bank  of  stormy  clouds.  Fierce,  ambitious,  covetous,  and 
unrelenting,  greedy  both  of  power  and  of  land,  they  were 
nevertheless  the  political  leaders  of  a  people  whom  they 
alternately  terrorised  and  cajoled,  and  they  recognised  the 
circumstances  which  their  position  entailed.2  In  their  huge 
fortified  houses  and  castles  they  kept  enormous  retinues  of 
officers  and  servants,  all  arranged  in  distinct  grades  and 
provided  with  regular  allowances  of  food  and  clothing.3 
Their  households  were  arranged  upon  a  scale  of  almost 

1  Froude,  History,  i.  p.  1. 

*Cf.  Stubbs,  Constit.  History,  Vol.  ILL.  ch.  xxi.  p.  542. 
3Ib.,  p.  538. 
1 80 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      181 

royal  magnificence,1  and  yet  the  most  accurate  accounts  2 
of  income  and  expenditure  were  duly  kept  and  audited. 
The  baron's  castle  was  both  a  court  for  the  neighbour- 
ing squires,  smaller  nobles  and  gentry,  and  a  school  of 
knightly  accomplishments  and  culture  for  their  sons,  while 
the  huge  kitchens  and  wardrobes  afforded  a  continual 
market  to  the  agriculturists  and  tradesmen  of  the  district.8 
His  progresses  from  one  establishment  to  another  made 
him  known  all  over  the  country,  and  increased  his  political 
prestige  and  popularity.  The  houses  of  the  Bishops  and 
other  great  church  dignitaries,  and  some  of  the  larger 
monasteries,  rivalled  those  of  the  barons  in  their  magnitude 
and  influence.4  The  nobility  and  the  great  officers  of  the 
Church  had,  in  fact,  an  amount  of  wealth  and  power  which 
they  have  rarely  surpassed  at  any  time  of  their  history. 

That  power  was  also  largely  increased  6  in  the  fifteenth 
century  by  the  practice  of  enclosing  land,  to  which  we 
shall  refer  later  at  greater  length.  The  nobles  saw  that 
land  meant  both  power  and  wealth,  and  grasped  more  and 
more  of  it  as  time  went  on.  The  Great  Plague  and  the 
practical  freedom  of  the  villeins  had  indeed  tried  them 
sorely  at  first,  but  now  a  new  use  for  land  was  springing 
up,6  with  a  new  system  under  which  the  services  of  their 
villeins  were  no  longer  required.  I  refer  to  the  growing 
demand  for  wool,  not  only  for  foreign  export  but  for  home 
manufacture.7  The  growth  of  home  manufactures  encour- 
aged sheep-farming  on  a  large  scale,  and  sheep-farming 
led  to  the  change  from  arable  to  pasturage  which  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  fifteenth  century.  So  field  was  added  to 
field,  pasture  to  pasture,  enclosure  to  enclosure,  and  the 
great  lords  rejoiced  anew  in  the  wealth  derived  from  then 
broad  acres.  The  evils  of  maintenance  and  livery  were 
increased  ;  the  power  of  the  nobility  grew  continually,  often 

1  Cf.  Denton,  Fifteenth  Century,  pp.  265-272. 

"Stubbs,  u.  «.,  p.  539.  *  Ib.,  p.  541.  *Ib.,  p.  543. 

BS.  R.  Gardiner,  Students'  Hittory  of  England,  i.  321. 

6  It  was  hardly  because  of  the  exhaustion  of  the  soil  that  landowners 
turned  arable  into  pasture,  as  Mr  Gardiner  (ut  supra)  seems  to  suppose. 
The  land  got  rest  under  the  system  of  fallow. 

7Cf.  Mrs  Green,  Town  Ltfe  in  the  fifteenth  Century,  i.  44. 


1 82  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

at  the  expense  of  their  poorer  neighbours  ; x  the  Crown, 
till  the  accession  of  Henry  VII.,  was  far  too  weak 
to  control  the  barons  that  stood  round  it  ;  the  great 
families  plundered  the  country,2  until  at  last,  quarrelling 
among  themselves  for  place  and  power,  they  became  their 
own  destruction,  and  assured  their  speedy  ruin  and  decay 
in  those  suicidal  conflicts  known  as  the  Wars  of  the  Roses. 

§  113.   The  Country  Gentry. 

Next  to  the  greater  nobility,  and  constituting  in  some 
measure  a  link  between  these  and  the  yeomen,  came  the 
large  body  of  knights  and  squires  or  country  gentry,3  allied 
to  the  nobility  by  claims  of  birth  and  descent,  very  often 
as  ancient  as  those  of  the  haughtiest  baron,  but  by  their  in- 
come and  rural  habits  often  not  far  removed  from  a  well-to- 
do  farmer.  The  income4  of  a  knight  might  be  placed  at 
£200  a  year,  of  a  squire  £50,  and  while  a  substantial 
yeoman  could  rarely  attain  the  former  sum,  he  might  easily 
surpass  the  latter.5  The  household  of  the  country  gentle- 
man was  modelled  on  that  of  his  greater  neighbour,  the 
noble,  and  was  often  in  consequence  more  elaborate  than 
we  should  have  supposed  necessary  for  his  rank.6  But  food 
was  abundant  and  cheap,  and  money  wages  were  not  high, 
while  very  often  the  servants  were  his  own  poor  relations.7 
In  the  cultivation  and  management  of  his  estate  the  knight 
or  squire  found  occupation  and  amusement ;  and  his  share 
of  public  duty,  both  in  county  court  and  in  musters  and 
arrays,  was  by  no  means  light.8  He  was  hardly  ever 
merely  an  "  absentee  landlord,"  but  "  lived  of  his  own  "  on 
his  own  land,  while  a  journey  to  London  was  the  event  of 
a  lifetime,  and  not  an  annual  occurrence.  His  life  was 
simple  and  rough — nay,  even,  according  to  our  modern  ideas, 

1  Cf.  Paslon  Letters  (ed.  Arber),  Vol.  I.    13-15,  and  Denton,  Fifteenth 
Century,  pp.  296-301. 

2  Cf.  Gardiner,  Students'  Hist,  of  England,  i.  321  and  323. 

3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  III.  xxi.  p.  544. 

4  From  the  Black  Book  of  Edward  IV.  (Stubbs,  u.  8.,  p.  538). 

5  So  we  conclude  from  the  well-known  case  of  Latimer's  father ;  Latimer, 
first  Sermon  before  King  Edward,  in  the  Preface  to  the  Northumberland 
Household  Book,  p.  xii. 

6  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  III.  xxi.  p.  548.  7  Ib.  8  Ib. 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      183 

coarse ;  but  he  generally  did  his  duty  according  to  his 
light,  and  knew  pretty  thoroughly  the  needs  and  the  busi- 
ness of  his  agricultural  neighbours  ;  and  when  at  last  he  was 
laid  to  rest  in  the  village  church  where  he  had  worshipped 
in  pious  but  easy-going  fashion  all  his  days,  he  was  probably 
regretted  by  the  people  of  the  manor  far  more  than  many 
a  greater  but  less  useful  man. 

§  114.  The  Yeomen. 

Next  to  the  country  gentry  came  that  large  and  sturdy 
class  of  yeomen  who,  for  some  centuries,  formed  the  real 
strength  of  English  rural  life.  Their  importance  begins  to 
be  marked  from  the  reign  of  Henry  II.  (1154-1189)  on- 
wards,1 but  in  the  fifteenth  century  they  had  come  more 
than  ever  to  the  front.  They  are  recognised  by  the  election 
act2  of  1430  A.D.,  which  conferred  the  county  franchise  on 
every  "  forty  shilling  freeholder,"  though  forty  shillings  by 
no  means  represented  the  income  of  a  substantial  yeoman. 
Their  ranks  were  strengthened,  after  the  economic  changes 
to  which  I  have  before  alluded,  by  the  newer  class  of 
tenant  farmers,  who  now,  together  with  the  smaller  owners 
and  freeholders,  made  up  what  is  called  the  yeomanry.3  In 
this  class  there  was  every  gradation  of  income,  from  that  of 
the  forty  shilling  freeholder  to  that  of  the  rich  tenant  farmer, 
who  rivalled  perhaps  the  squire  himself,  though  of  course  a 
freeholder  might  equally  be  a  rich  man  and  the  tenant  farmer 
barely  worth  a  couple  of  pounds.  The  yeomanry,  by  the 
income  and  social  position  of  its  richer  members,  was  con- 
nected with  the  gentry  ;  by  its  agricultural  occupations,  and 
by  the  poverty  of  the  smaller  tenants  and  freeholders,  with 
the  labourers  and  poorer  tenants  in  villeinage.4  Thus  from 
baron  to  villein  there  was  a  closely-connected  gradation  of 
ranks,  though  the  word  "  villein  "  had  practically  lost  all  its 
old  significance,  and  after  the  reign  of  Richard  II.  is  never 
found  in  the  Statute  books.6  Freeholder,  tenant,  and 

1  Stubbu,  u.  s.,  p.  552. 

J  The  famous  statute  8  Henry  VI.,  c.  7,  which  was  not  repealed  till  the 
HGeo.  III.,  c.  58. 

3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  III.  xxi.  p.  552.  4  76.,  p.  554. 

5  Froude,  Hint,  of  England,  i.  p.  12. 


1 84  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

villein  alike  were  now  merged  into  the  yeomanry,  except  in 
those  cases  where  a  man  had  become  merely  an  agricul- 
tural labourer.  Politically,  they  were  a  very  important 
element,  for  the  forty  shilling  franchise  must  have  included 
nearly  all  of  them,  and  though  the  country  gentry  monopo- 
lised Parliamentary  representation,  their  election  depended 
on  their  yeoman  constituents.1  It  was  the  yeomanry, 
too,  who  served  on  juries,  chose  the  coroner,  attended  the 
sheriffs  court,  and  assembled  with  arms  which  they  them- 
selves provided  in  the  muster  of  the  forces  of  the  shire  2  to 
follow  their  King,  if  need  were,  across  the  Channel,  and  win 
victory  and  glory  for  their  leader  on  the  battlefields  of 
France.8 

§  115.  Agriculture  and  Sheep- farming. 

The  condition  of  the  labourer  we  have  seen  already,  and 
we  may  now  therefore  turn  to  the  condition  of  the  chief 
industry  with  which  he  was  connected.  Agriculture,  as 
regards  its  methods,  was  still  more  or  less  stationary,  but 
important  changes  were  taking  place,  both  among  the  tillers 
of  the  soil  and  in  the  uses  to  which  the  land  was  put.  We 
have  noticed  the  growth  of  the  tenant  farmer  and  yeoman 
and  the  emancipation  of  the  villein,  and  now  we  note  the 
appearance  of  the  sheep  farmer  on  a  large  scale.  For  his 
appearance  in  this  century  there  was  indeed  more  than  one 
cause.  In  the  first  place,  the  silent  but  steady  growth  of 
home  manufactures4  since  the  days  of  Edward  III.5  had  by 
this  time  begun  to  create  a  considerable  home  market  for 
wool,  in  addition  to  the  already  existing  market  among  the 
manufacturers  of  Flanders.  That  was  no  doubt  the  chief 
cause.  But,  besides  this,  sheep-farming  offered  to  land- 
lords a  cheaper  and  easier  method  of  using  their  land  than 
other  branches  of  industry,  from  the  fact  that  it  required 

1  Stubbs,  «.  «.,  p.  557.  2  Stubbs,  «.  «.,  p.  552. 

8  Cf.  the  remarks  on  yeomanry  in  war  in  Green's  History,  i.  p.  421. 

4  As  evidence  of  this  growth  we  may  quote  from  a  treatise  by  Sir  John 
Fortescue,  Gjjnmodities  of  England  (written  some  time  before  1451),  where 
he  mentions  English  ' '  woollen  cloth  ready  made  at  all  times  to  serve  the 
merchants  of  any  two  kingdoms." 

5  Above,  p.  127. 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      185 

comparatively  little  labour.  This  would  be  a  great  con- 
sideration, for  labour  had  now  become  so  dear,  and  the 
services  of  villeins  so  irregularly  and  rarely  paid  *  since  the 
great  Revolt,  that  landowners  were  only  too  ready  to  turn 
to  any  industry  where  villein  labour  was  not  required. 
Hence  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  a  large  increase  of 
sheep-farming  in  the  fifteenth  century,  an  increase  which 
caused  foreigners  to  jest  and  English  rhymers  to  lament, 
because  (it  was  said)  we  cared  more  for  sheep  than  for  the 
ships  of  our  navy.  "Where  are  our  ships,  what  are  our 
swords  become  ?  Our  enemies  bid  us  for  a  ship  set  a 
sheep," 2  was  the  cry,  though,  like  most  political  cries,  it 
was  doubtless  only  partially  true.  Other  complaints  were 
uttered  as  time  went  on,  especially  as  the  enclosures  of 
land  made  by  landowners  caused  widespread  distress  in 
many  districts,3  and  the  wheat-growing  interest  of  that  day 
was  sufficiently  strong  to  induce  the  government  to  frame 
enactments  which  anticipated  the  Corn  Laws  of  a  later 
date.  The  wheat-growers,  as  opposed  to  the  sheep-farmers, 
declared  that  their  industry  required  encouragement,  and 
complained  that  the  price  of  wheat  was  too  low.  Whether 
there  was  very  much  truth  in  this  outcry  may  be  doubted, 
since  at  no  time  of  our  history  has  cheap  bread  roused 
anything  but  complaint  in  the  British  farmer's  breast ;  but, 
at  any  rate,  the  export  of  British  corn  was  encouraged,4  in 
contradiction  of  a  still  earlier  policy,  while  the  import  of 
foreign  corn  was  prohibited 6  unless  the  price  of  home- 
grown wheat  was  6s.  8d.  a  quarter.  In  justice  to  the 
government,  however,  it  should  be  added  that  mere  pro- 
tection was  not  the  only  object  of  these  Corn  Laws,  though, 

1  We  find  tenants  in  villeinage  quitting  the  manor  without  leave,  and 
tallages  refused  to  the  lords  (Denton,  Fifteenth  Century,  p.  113),  nor  were 
manorial   dues  paid:    "now  they  pay  nothing"  is  the  complaint;   cf. 
Blomfield's  Hixtvry  of  Launton,  MS.,  quoted  by  Denton,  «.  ».,  p.  114. 

2  From  the  political  poem  (of  about  1435)  called  The  Libelle  of  English 
Policie,  36,  37. 

'  See  below,  p.  213. 

4  By  the  17  Richard  II.,  c.  7  ;  the  4  Henry  VI.,  c.  5 ;  and  the  15  Henry 
VI.,  c.  2.  Previously  to  this  the  34  Edward  III.,  c.  20,  had  prohibited 
the  export. 

8  By  the  3  Edward  IV.,  c.  2. 


1 86  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

of  course,  they  were  passed  by  a  Parliament  at  that  time  com- 
posed almost  exclusively  of  landowners  ;  but  that  legislators 
sought  to  encourage  thereby  the  growth  of  tillage  as  opposed 
to  pasture  in  order  that  the  rural  population  might  not  be 
compelled  to  leave  the  land.  Not  only  for  agricultural,  but 
also  for  military  reasons,  it  was  important  to  prevent  the 
depopulation  of  rural  districts,  which,  in  some  cases,  sheep- 
farming  seemed  to  imply ;  and  therefore  it  is  interesting 
to  notice  how  "  servants  and  labourers "  were  directed  to 
practice  with  the  bow  and  arrow  on  Sundays  and  holidays 
instead  of  playing  football,  dice,  and  skittles,  and  other 
unprofitable  games.1 

§  116.   The  Stock  and  Land  Lease. 

Apart  from  sheep-farming,  however,  and  the  consequent 
change  from  tillage  to  pasturage,2  things  went  on  much  as 
before  in  agriculture,  and  very  few  changes  were  made. 
The  "  stock  and  land  "  lease  system  was  still  in  operation, 
and  we  have  a  very  good  example  of  its  working  in  the 
middle  of  the  fifteenth  century.3  The  example  is  from  a 
farm  at  Alton  Barnes  in  Wiltshire,  in  the  year  1455  A.D. 
The  rental  was  £14,  and  the  "stock"  includes  corn,  and 
both  live  and  dead  stock.  The  corn  was  valued  at  the 
price  of  the  local  market  when  the  tenant  took  the  farm 
over,  being  altogether  £1 1,  8s.  6|d. ;  the  live  stock  con- 
sisted of  5  horses,  1 1  oxen,  3  cows  and  a  bull,  2  heifers  and 
2  yearlings,  571  sheep,  and  was  valued  at  £64,  15s.  4£d.; 
and  the  dead  stock  came  to  £3,  15s.  2d.,  including  farm 
implements  and  some  household  utensils.  By  the  terms  of 
the  lease  the  tenant  has  to  restore  every  article  and  animal 
enumerated  (or  its  value)  in  good  condition,  though  the 
landlord  guarantees  his  tenant  against  any  loss  of  sheep 
amounting  to  over  1 0  per  cent,  of  their  number.  Sometimes 
this  guarantee  involved  a  severe  loss  to  the  landlord,4  who 
also  was  responsible  for  repairs,  trade  losses,  and  "poor 
years,"5  so  that  perhaps  it  is  not  surprising  that  land- 

1  1  Richard  II.,  c.  7.  a  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  HI.  xxi.  p.  611. 

3  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iii.  705-708. 

4  See  example  in  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  285.  5  Ib.,  p.  286. 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      187 

owners  were  not  eager  to  give  such  leases  if  they  could  do 
better,  and  as  time  went  on  they  fell  into  disuse.  The 
value  of  land  rose  rapidly  in  the  fifteenth  century,1  and 
people  of  good  means  and  position  were  anxious  to  buy  it 
for  the  sake  of  the  social  and  other  advantages  it  entailed,2 
as  well  as  for  the  profits  derivable  from  wool  growing. 
Rent,  too,  rose  rapidly,3  and  the  smaller  tenants  and  yeomen 
began  to  feel  the  competition  of  large  farmers  and  sheep 
breeders.  But  still  the  great  mass  of  land  was  held  in  the 
old  common  fields,  with  their  curiously  intermixed  strips 
belonging  to  different  tenants,4  and  the  great  majority  of 
the  rural  labourers  had  a  piece  of  land,5  either  of  their  own 
or  as  a  holding,  wherefrom  to  supplement  their  wages.  A 
landless  labourer  was  not  yet  the  rule,  while  most  men 
could  still  feel  themselves,  in  some  measure  at  least,  active 
and  real  sharers  in  the  life  of  their  village  community. 
The  old  institutions  of  primitive  days  were  not  yet  dead,6 
though  enclosures  and  legislation  were  soon  to  do  their  best 
to  kill  them.  They  were  giving  way  to  more  modern 
requirements,  but  still  they  retained  many  relics  of  the 
past ;  and  though,  undoubtedly,  it  is  owing  to  their  per- 
sistence that  the  slow  progress  of  agricultural  methods  is 
due,  and  though  it  was  necessary  they  should  go,  one  cannot 
help  regretting  that  the  disintegration  of  the  old  village 
community  took  much  of  value  and  interest  from  the  social 
side  of  the  labourer's  life. 

§  117.   The  Towns  and  Town  Constitutions. 

When  we  turn  now  from  the  country  to  the  towns  we 
find   that  here  again  the  fifteenth  century  is  marked   by 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  288. 

2  Cf.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  III.  xxi.  pp.  610,  611.   Among  the  advantages 
of  landowners  may  be  mentioned  a  lower  rate  of  taxation,  the  county 
franchise,  legal  protection  from  absolute  forfeiture.    Forfeited  lands  could 
be  restored  to  the  heirs  of  the  dispossessed,  whereas  a  merchant's  property 
once  forfeited  was  gone  for  ever.  *  See  below,  p.  213. 

4  The  difficulties  caused  to  landlords  by  this  system  are  shown  in 
mediaeval  accounts.  Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  286,  287. 

8  Above,  p.  177. 

6  Cf.  Gromme,  Village  Community,  ch.  viii. ,  where  instances  of  survivals 
of  much  later  date  are  given. 


1 88  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

growth  and  change.  It  has  been  already  remarked  that  it 
was  not  till  the  twelfth  century  that  the  towns  have  any 
independent  municipal  life  as  boroughs  at  all,1  while  even 
in  the  fourteenth  century  this  municipal  life  was  on  a  small 
scale  ;2  but  in  the  fifteenth  century  wealth  was  accumulating3 
and  the  towns  growing  more  important,  till,  at  the  close 
of  the  period,  they  emerge  in  something  very  like  their 
modern  form  as  corporations.4  If  we  take,  for  example,  the 
period  between  the  reigns  of  Henry  III.  (1216-1272)  and 
Henry  VII.  (1488-1509)  we  find  that  the  amount  of 
growth  is  very  considerable.  In  the  earlier  part  of  the 
period  5  the  towns  had  indeed  gained  their  charters,  with 
the  rights  of  holding  their  own  courts  under  their  own 
officers,  the  right  of  compounding  for  their  payments  to 
the  crown  in  the  shape  of  the  firma  burgi,6  and  collecting 
this  among  their  citizens,  and  they  had  gained  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  merchant  and  craft  gilds  that  had  so  important  a 
share  in  their  municipal  life.  But  these  rights  and  privileges 
were  only  a  commencement  of  a  growth  towards  a  larger 
freedom.  In  the  later  years  of  the  period  we  find  that  the 
typical  constitution  of  the  town  is  the  modern  one  of  a 
close  corporation  of  mayor,  aldermen,  and  council,7  with 
more  or  less  clearly  defined  organisation  and  precise 
numbers,  and  certainly  with  greater  and  more  independent 
self-governing  powers.  The  "bailiff"  has  been  replaced 
by  the  "  mayor,"  and  the  town  constitution  gains  by  the 
change  a  unity  hitherto  unknown  ;  the  merchant  and  craft 
gilds  have  become  merged  into  the  corporation  and  take 
part  in  the  municipal  government ;  yet  exactly  how  and 
when  these  changes  took  place  it  is  most  difficult  to  say. 
It  is,  however,  very  clear  that  the  growth  of  towns  and  of 
civic  constitutions  throughout  the  country  was  exceeding 
varied  and  irregular.8  There  is  no  marked  line  of  develop- 
ment ;  sometimes  the  larger  towns  received  their  modern 
constitution  long  before  the  smaller ;  and  altogether  there 
is  great  diversity  of  growth.  There  is  not  space  here  to 

1  Mrs  Green,  Town  Life,  i.  p.  11.  2  Tb.,  i.  p.  13. 

8  Jb.,  i.  p.  15.  *  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  HI.  xxi.  p.  560. 

6  76.,  p.  559.  e  Above,  pp.  90,  93. 

7  Stubbs,  M.  «.,  p.  560.  8  Ashley,  Econ.  Hint.,  II.  i.  p.  11. 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      189 

discuss  the  question  fully,  nor  is  it  necessary  for  our  pur- 
pose. It  is  sufficient  to  note  the  development  of  the 
towns,  and,  consequently,  of  town  life,  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, as  the  beginning  of  that  tendency  towards  urban 
attraction  which  is,  perhaps  unfortunately,  a  necessary 
characteristic  of  modern  industrial  progress.  But  we 
may  devote  a  passing  mention  to  the  connection  of  the 
gilds  and  municipal  life. 

§  1 1 8.  The  Gilds  and  Municipal  Institutions. 

The  story  of  the  relations  of  the  merchant  gilds  to  the 
municipal  government  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  craft 
gilds  on  the  other,  is  exceedingly  complex.1  Sometimes 
merchant  gilds  regarded  the  craft  gilds  as  rivals,  and 
attempted  to  suppress  them,  while  at  others  they  sought  a 
surer  means  of  regulating  them  by  including  them  in  their 
own  body.2  But  in  the  fifteenth  century  the  craft  gilds 
were  beginning  to  decay,  at  least  in  the  older  corporate 
towns,  and  were  ceasing  to  be  really  effective  institutions 
for  the  wellbeing  of  the  crafts  which  they  professed  to 
regulate.3  Consequently  we  need  not  be  surprised  at  their 
practical  destruction  by  Somerset  in  the  next  century 
(1547).  But  the  merchant  gilds  had  in  many  cases 
become  identified  with  the  corporation  or  governing  body  of 
the  town  to  which  they  belonged,  and  regulated  trade  in 
much  the  same  fashion  as  before,4  though  trade  was  now 
assuming  so  much  larger  proportions  that  it  was  outgrowing 
the  powers  of  the  regulating  bodies.  In  some  cases  the 
frame  of  "  merchant  gild  "  died  out,  as  at  York,  but  even 
then  the  custom  of  admitting  "  freemen  "  as  citizens  was 
exercised,  as  at  Leicester,  by  the  corporation  in  such  a  way 
as  to  show  that  the  admission  was  a  relic  of  the  powers  of 
the  ancient  gild.5  In  other  places,  however,  the  name 
and  idea  of  the  gild  was  still  preserved,  and  furnished 
occasions  for  city  pageants  of  considerable  splendour.6  But 
for  all  practical  purposes  the  merchant  gilds  had  now  be- 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hi*t.  III.  xxi.  p.  662.  *  Stubbs,  «.  «.,  p.  563. 

*  Cunningham,  i.  p.  464.  *  Stubbs,  u.  «.,  p.  564. 

8  Ib.  «  As  at  Preston  ;  Stubbs,  t*.  «.,  p.  565. 


190  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

come  identified  with  the  town  corporations,  and  even  the  gild 
"  halls  "  had  become  the  common  hall  or  "  town  hall "  of  the 
city.1  The  aldermen  of  the  gild  became  the  aldermen  of 
town  wards,  and  the  property  of  the  gild  became  the  pro- 
perty of  the  town.2  In  London,  however,  the  still  existing 
"  City  Companies  "  represent  not  merchant  but  craft  gilds, 
of  which  the  twelve  most  important  availed  themselves  in 
the  fourteenth  century  of  the  power  to  grant  livery  to 
their  members,  and  were  then,  and  are  still,  distinguished 
as  the  Livery  Companies.3 

§  119.   The  Decay  of  Certain  Towns. 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  short  summary,  therefore,  that 
it  is  to  the  growth  of  industry  that  we  owe  the  development 
of  our  town  life  and  municipal  self-government,  and  that  it 
is  in  industrial  history  that  the  origin  of  the  towns  of 
to-day  must  be  sought.  In  later  years  towns  take  an 
important  share  in  political  history,  as  well  as  industrial, 
but  in  the  period  with  which  we  are  now  dealing  it  was  not 
so.  They  did  not  play,  either  in  or  out  of  Parliament,  an 
important  part  in  the  dynastic  struggles  of  the  fifteenth 
century.4  Probably  they  were  too  much  occupied  with  the 
anxieties  and  responsibilities  of  their  own  development  to 
care  much  about  outside  politics,  for  we  must  remember 
that  in  mediaeval  England  the  life  both  of  town  and  village 
was  very  self-centred,  and  neither  citizens  or  villagers  had 
much  interest  in  affairs  outside  their  own  boundaries.  In 
any  case,  many  of  the  English  towns  at  this  time  seem  to 
have  been  in  a  somewhat  depressed  condition  from  the 
industrial  point  of  view,  however  much  they  might  be 
advancing  municipally  and  socially.  The  older  corporate 
towns  seem  to  have  decayed 5  towards  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  however  prosperous  they  may  have  been 
at  its  beginning,  and  early  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.6  it 

1  Stubbs,  u.  s.,  p.  565.     One  might  cite  the  example  of  the  Nottingham 
"Gild  Hall,"  which  is  the  name  still  given  to  the  quite  modern  building 
used  as  a  town  hall. 

2  Stubbs,  tt.  *.,  p.  566.         3  Ib.,  pp.  566,  567.         4  Stubbs,  u.  s.,  p.  592. 
5  This  is  evident  from  the  remissions  of  taxation  on  towns  made  in  1496. 

Rot.  Parl,  vi.  514,  438.  6  Statute  3  Henry  VIII. ,  c.  8. 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      191 

is  officially  noted  that  "  many  and  the  most  part  of  the 
cities,  burghs,  and  towns  corporate  within  this  realm  of  Eng- 
land be  fallen  into  ruin  and  decay."  At  first  sight  this 
would  seem  rather  a  startling  condition  of  things,  and,  in 
fact,  one  that  is  almost  inexplicable  in  view  of  the  growth 
of  industry  and  commerce  which  we  know  to  have  taken  place 
in  this  age.  But  the  explanation  is  not  far  to  seek.  First  of 
all,  we  note  that  the  complaint  is  made  only  of  the  old  and 
corporate  towns,  and  that  many  newer  towns  were  growing 
up  and  flourishing  with  prosperous  manufactures.  This  was 
certainly  the  case  with  Manchester,1  Birmingham,2  and 
(later)  Sheffield ; 3  and  also  with  the  towns  of  Leeds,  Wake- 
field,  and  others  in  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire.4  The 
fact  is  that  the  restrictions  made  by  the  gilds  in  these  older 
towns  rendered  them  obnoxious5  to  the  new  manufacturers 
who  were  everywhere  springing  up,  and  who  preferred  to 
leave  the  old  cities  and  carry  on  their  occupations  undis- 
turbed elsewhere.  Then,  again,  the  heavy  taxation  necessi- 
tated by  the  wars  of  Henry  VI. 's  reign,  and  the  unnecessary 
but  heavy  exactions  of  the  grasping  Henry  VII.,  had  fallen 
very  hardly  on  the  corporate  towns,  while  others  had 
escaped.6  But  still  another  cause,  and  one  more  powerful 
than  either  of  these,  may  be  assigned.  It  is  that  they  were 
at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century  no  longer  necessary  as 
places  of  security  for  traders  and  manufacturers.7  In  the 
troublous  days  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  and  in  the  old  times 
before  them,  when  the  nobility  were  constantly  engaged  in 
private  warfare,  it  would  not  have  been  safe  for  a  merchant 
or  a  manufacturer,  or  for  anyone  with  much  property  and 
little  power,8  to  have  lived  outside  a  walled  town,  as  most 

1  Mentioned  as  a  market  in  the  Rot.  Parl.,  vi.  182  a,  in  Edward  IV.'s 
reign,  but  in  1542  mentioned  in  a  statute  of  Edward  VL  as  a  nourishing 
manufacturing  town  (5  and  6  Ed.  VI. ,  c.  6). 

2  Described  by  Leland,  Itinerary,  iv.  114. 

*  A  company  of  cutlers  was  formed  here  in  Elizabeth's  reign. 

4  Defoe,  Plan  of  English  Commerce,  127,  129,  refers  to  these  towns  having 
woollen  manufactures  under  Henry  VII. 

5  Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  452,  455,  461,  and  above,  p.  146. 

•  Ib.,  i.  461.  7  Cf.  Fronde's  remarks,  History,  i.  9. 
8  For  instances  of  oppression  by  great  nobles,   see   Denton,  Fifteenth 

Century,  pp.  296-301,  and  the  Paston  Letters  (ed.  Arber),  Vol.  I.  13-15. 


192  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

of  them  then  were.  A  master  workman  could  not  then 
have  migrated  with  any  safety  into  a  country  district,  either 
to  obtain  water-power  or  to  evade  gild-made  regulations. 
But  now  that  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  were  over,  and  the  Crown 
had  proved  strong  enough  to  establish  peace  and  security 
throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  kingdom,  one  great  use  of 
the  older  towns  as  centres  of  security  for  manufactures  and 
trade  had  become  unnecessary ;  they  begin  to  decline  in 
importance,  though  commerce  and  industry  are  progressing ; 
while  newer  centres  take  their  place,  or  urban  industrial 
occupations  are  spreading  even  into  rural  districts.  Thus  the 
pacification  of  the  kingdom,  which  was  the  work  of  Henry 
VII.  and  the  Tudors,  and  which  has  lasted  with  but  one 
serious  outbreak  into  our  own  times,  prevented  what  might 
otherwise  have  happened  too  prematurely,  namely,  that  con- 
centration of  population  into  the  towns  which  is  one  of  the 
greatest  difficulties  of  the  present  age. 

§120.   The  Commercial  and  Industrial   Changes 
of  the  Fifteenth  Century. 

Meanwhile,  as  we  have  hinted,  manufactures  and  com- 
merce in  the  fifteenth  century,  in  spite  of  the  decay  of 
certain  towns,  were  certainly  progressing.  The  woollen 
manufacture  received  a  great  impetus  from  Henry  VII., 
who,  as  Edward  III.  had  done,  encouraged  foreigners  to 
settle  in  England  in  order  to  instruct  English  artisans.1 
He  directed  his  attention  specially  to  the  West  Riding  of 
Yorkshire  and  the  towns  of  Leeds,  Wakefield,  and  Halifax  ; 
and  about  the  same  time  the  export  of  wool 2  was  for- 
bidden in  order  that  there  might  be  plenty  of  material 
for  making  woollen  cloth.  In  the  East  of  England,  Nor- 
wich and  the  county  of  Norfolk  3  generally  still  remained  a 
flourishing  seat  of  manufactures  both  of  woollen  and  worsted 

1  Defoe,  Plan  of  English  Commerce,  127,  129. 

2  4  Henry  VII.,  c.  11.     The  fact  that  it  was  again  prohibited  by  the  22 
Henry  VIII.,  c.  2,  and  the  37  Henry  VIII. ,  c.  15,  shows  that  either  the 
prohibition  was  useless  or  that  it  was  only  temporary. 

3  Cf.  the  information  implied  in  the  Statutes  5  Henry  VIII. ,  c.  4,  and  14 
and  15  Henry  VUL,  c.  3. 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      193 

stuffs.  There  was  an  active  export  trade  in  wool  to  Italian 1 
as  well  as  to  Flemish  towns,  and  other  foreign  commerce 
was  being  entered  into  that  was  to  lead  to  great  develop- 
ments in  the  future.2  In  fact,  the  fifteenth  century  shows 
us  remarkable  progress.  It  is  the  beginning  in  many  ways 
of  a  new  era  in  more  than  one  branch  of  industry.  For 
there  were  at  least  three  great  changes  that  form  in  them- 
selves a  commercial  and  industrial  revolution,  almost  as 
important  in  some  ways,  though  not  so  striking,  as  the 
industrial  revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century.  This 
series  of  developments  was :  (1)  the  change  in  agriculture, 
already  commented  upon,3  from  tillage  to  pasturage  for  the 
sake  of  wool-growing ;  (2)  the  change  from  England  being 
merely  a  wool-growing  to  a  wool-manufacturing  country  * ; 
and  (3)  the  change  in  foreign  commerce,6  whereby  English- 
men, who  in  the  days  of  Edward  III.  had  allowed  nearly  all 
their  foreign  commerce  to  be  monopolised  by  foreign  mer- 
chants, now  began  to  take  it  into  their  own  hands.  Nor 
should  we  omit,  as  factors  of  considerable  importance,  the 
great  discoveries  made  at  this  time  by  Columbus  and  Cabot, 
though  at  first  these  discoveries  had  but  little  effect  upon 
English  commerce.  Henry  VII.,  indeed,  seems  to  have  had 
more  foresight  in  this  matter  than  most  of  his  subjects,  for 
he  more  than  once  granted  commissions  for  the  discovery 
and  investment  of  new  lands.6  It  was  not  his  fault  that 
England  did  not  take  the  place  of  Spain  in  the  New  World  7  ; 
but  Englishmen  were  not  yet  ready  for  such  an  enterprise, 
and  perhaps  it  was  as  well  that  they  were  not.  Their 
success  was  all  the  greater  for  its  delay. 

1  Namely,  Pisa,  Venice,  and  Florence ;  Rymer,  Fcedera,  XII.  390. 

2  E.g.  English  merchants  are  now  found  (1513)  doing  business  in  the 
Levant,  to  which  they  had  never  traded  before.     Cf.  Cunningham,  i.  p. 
438,  which  see  also  for  the  development  of  shipping  and  foreign  commerce 
generally. 

3  Above,  p.  184. 

4  Cf.  Mrs  Green,  Town  Life  in  Fifteenth  Century,  i.  p.  44. 
8  76.,  i.  p.  122. 

8  Besides  his  patronage  of  Cabot  (cf.  Rymer.  Fcedera,  XII.  595)  he 
granted  patents  of  exploration  in  1501  and  later  to  various  Bristol  mer- 
chants (ib.  XIII.  41  and  37). 

7  Burrows,  Commentaries  on  the  History  of  England,  p.  252,  puts  it  thus. 
Others  are  inclined  to  think  Henry  might  have  done  more  than  he  did. 

X 


194  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§   121.   The  Close  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  close  of  the  15th  century  brings  us  to  the  close  of 
the  Middle  Ages.  Henceforth  we  are  treading  on  modern 
ground,  and  industry  also  begins  to  develope  under  more 
modern  ideas.  The  old  order  changes  and  the  new  grows 
gradually  into  its  place,  till  at  length  we  of  the  nineteenth 
century  look  back  upon  mediaeval  life  as  upon  something 
not  quite  akin  to  ours.  We  feel  ourselves  more  in  touch 
with  the  men  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
than  with  those  of  the  fourteenth,  and  naturally  so,  for 
there  is  perhaps  a  greater  gulf  fixed  between  the  days  of 
Edward  III.  and  Elizabeth  than  between  the  days  of 
Elizabeth  and  Victoria.  The  old  manorial  and  feudal  land 
system  was  dying  out ;  the  old  ideas  of  regulating  crafts, 
trade,  and  commerce  were  giving  way  to  wider  and 
looser  methods,  more  competitive  than  heretofore,  and  of 
more  national  comprehensiveness.  Merchants  were  begin- 
ning to  look  beyond  the  confines  of  the  narrow  seas  to  the 
riches  of  the  gorgeous  East  and  to  the  newly  found  lands 
of  the  mysterious  West.  Industry  was  shaking  off  the 
bonds  and  trammels  of  local  regulations  ;  the  labourer  of 
the  manor  no  longer  feared  the  authority  of  his  lord,  nor  the 
artisan  of  the  town  the  censure  of  his  gild.  Social  life  also 
was  changing  and  with  it  political  life  as  well.  The  Wars 
of  the  Hoses  had  destroyed  the  great  nobles  of  the  past, 
and  now  the  royal  power  rested  chiefly  upon  the  goodwill 
of  the  middle  classes.1  The  ideal  of  this  class  was  a  king 
who  would  act  as  a  superior  kind  of  chief  constable  2  who, 
by  keeping  the  great  men  in  order  would  allow  their 
inferiors  to  make  money  in  peace.  Such  a  king  was  found 
in  Henry  VII.  It  was  not  perhaps  a  very  high  ideal,  but 
it  was  practically  possible,  and  under  Henry  VII.  the 
middle  classes  prospered.  Nor  were  the  lower  classes  as 
far  as  we  have  been  able  to  judge,  less  fortunate. 
Poverty  and  crime  existed,  as  unfortunately  they  always 
will,  and  there  were  Poor  Laws 3  with  penal  codes  to 

1  Of.  Gardiner,  Student's  History,  i.  357.  2/6.,  i.  331. 

3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  iii.  xxi.,  pp.  599  and  600,  points  out  how  the 
alms-giving  of  the  clergy,  the  monasteries  and  the  gilds,  as  well  as  general 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  AGES      195 

meet  them.  But  poverty  was  neither  so  deep  nor  so 
widespread  as  it  is  now,  nor  as  it  soon  became,  and  the 
monasteries  and  gilds  (when  they  did  their  duty)  were 
possibly  quite  as  efficient  as  a  modern  Board  of  Guardians. 
On  the  whole,  then,  the  fifteenth  century  was  a  period 
of  prosperity  and  content,  in  spite  of  both  civil  and  foreign 
wars ;  and  even  the  wasteful  reign  of  Henry  VI.,  with  its 
unsuccessful  wars  with  France,1  and  huge  subsidies  to  carry 
them  on,2  though  it  made  the  Government  unpopular  and 
caused  widespread  national  discontent  and  occasional  insur- 
rections in  Kent  and  Wiltshire,3  did  not  materially  injure 
the  general  welfare.  The  king  himself,  however,  was 
nearly  bankrupt.4  The  Wars  of  the  Roses  which  followed 
(1455-86)  do  not  seem  to  have  affected  the  country  at 
large  very  much,  being  mostly  fought  in  a  series  of  much 
exaggerated  skirmishes  by  small  bodies  of  nobles  and  their 
followers.6  So,  at  least,  one  might  infer  from  the  small 
effect  they  had  upon  wages  and  prices.6  They  ended  in 

charity  sufficed  for  the  necessities  of  the  poor.  Most  of  the  legislation  on 
the  subject  was  directed  against  idleness  and  random  begging.  The 
statutes  of  1388,  1495  and  1504  were  among  the  first  attempts  at  a  law  of 
settlement  and  organised  relief.  But  these  acts  refer  only  to  professional 
mendicants,  (including  pilgrims,  friars,  and  even  University  scholars)  and 
it  is  probable  that  for  the  poor  who  remained  at  home  and  were  not 
vagrants  no  such  legislation  was  needed  (ib.  p.  603).  It  was  vagrancy 
more  than  unrelieved  poverty  that  was  the  cause  of  legislation. 

1  For  this  war  cf.  the  useful  summary  in  Burrows  Commentaries  on  the 
Hist,  of  Eng.t  pp.  215-221  and  Green,  History  of  the  English  People,  i.  pp. 
547-563. 

*Cf.  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  iii.,  pp.  86-125. 

8  This  was  the  rebellion  under  Cade,  in  Kent,  (June  1450).  It  was  purely 
political  and  has  no  such  social  significance  as  the  Revolt  of  1381.  See 
Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.,  iii.  xviii.  p.  150.  In  Wiltshire  the  Bishop  of  Salis- 
bury was  murdered.  Ib.  p.  152. 

4  Ib.  pp.  117  and  144. 

5  "  Happily  a  war  of  barons  and  their  retainers  rather  than  of  the  nation 
generally.     The  towns  suffered  but  little."    Burrows,  Commentaries,  p.  222. 
On  the  other  hand,  Denton,  Fifteenth  Century,  p.  115,  says  that  the  Wars 
of  the  Roses  were  of  a  most  devastating  character,  and  that  one-tenth  of  the 
population  were  killed.     If  so,  it  is  extraordinary  that  so  little  effect  is 
noticeable  in  manorial  accounts.      The  statements  of  the  Chroniclers  as  to 
numbers  slain  must  be  received  in  this  case,  as  in  that  of  the  Black  Death, 
with  the  utmost  caution. 

'Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  332-334.  "It  had  no  bearing  on  work  and 
wages,"  (p.  334) 


196  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  ruin  of  the  majority  of  the  feudal  aristocracy,1  and 
at  the  same  time  opened  a  further  path  for  the  influence  of 
the  industrial  classes,  whose  favour  Henry  VII.  had  the 
wisdom  to  court,  and  in  return  was  supported  by  them  in 
his  policy  of  weakening  the  power  of  the  great  barons. 
He  encouraged  commerce,2  and  secured  peace  for  his  king- 
dom while  gaining  by  rather  dubious  methods  consider- 
able wealth  for  his  treasury.3  In  his  reign  the  nation 
prospered,4  and  the  Middle  Ages  came  to  a  close  in  a 
progressive  and  industrious  England  (1500  A.D.). 

But  before  the  next  century  was  completed  great  changes 
had  taken  place,  one  class  at  least  had  received  a  severe 
blow,  and  some  of  the  worst  difficulties  of  modern  days  had 
already  begun. 

1  For  the  mutual  destruction  of  the  nobles  cf.  Gairdner,  Lancaster  and 
York,  p.  227.     It  is  quite  true,  however,  as  Denton  remarks  (Fifteenth 
Century,  p.  261)  that  the  wealth  of  the  few  who  remained  was  greatly 
increased,  e.g.  the  peers  Buckingham,  Northumberland  and  Norfolk. 

2  E.g.  by  his  treaties  with  Denmark  in  1490  (Rymer,  Foedera,  xii.  381) 
with  Florence  (ib.  xii.  390)  in  the  same  year,  and  the  "  Intercursus  magnus  " 
with  Flanders  in  1496,  (ib.  xii.  578). 

3  He  had  as  much  as  £1,800,000.     Gardiner,  Student's  History  of  England, 
i.  357. 

4  One  proof  of  prosperity  is  that  the  nation  could  never  have  stood  the- 
burden  of  the  French  Wars  as  it  did  unless  it  had  been  fairly  prosperous. 
Another  proof  is  the  growth  of  sheep-farming,  which,  as  said  above,  in- 
dicates growing  manufactures.     Yet  a  third  is  the  making  of  commercial 
treaties,  as  mentioned  in  note  2. 

SPECIAL  NOTE. 

A  study  of  the  map  opposite,  showing  the  distribution  of  wealth  in  the 
various  counties  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  and  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  will  give  a  clear  idea  of  the  general  state  of  the  country.  The 
wealthiest  counties  were,  at  this  period,  nearly  all  agricultural ;  while  the 
north  and  north-western  counties,  now  so  rich,  were  then  among  the 
poorest.  Compare  the  maps  opposite  pp.  263,  350,  and  454. 


DISTRIBUTION 
OF      WEALTH       IN 

ENGLAND. 

I  SO3. 


NORTH 
SEA 


Scale  of  English  Miles 

O       10     BO    80     40   60  78  100 


WEALTH    IN    ENGLAND    IN    1503. 

This  Map  Is  based  on  the  assessment  of  counties  made  In  1503  by  Henry  VII..  for  a  special 
"aid."  The  table  of  counties  in  order  of  their  assessment  will  be  found  In  Roger*'  Hist.  Afrit-  Iv.  89. 
The  basis  adopted  is  the  number  of  acres  to  every  £1  of  assessment,  the  richer  counties  thus  having 
the  least  number  of  acres  to  the  £1. 

1.    Counties    with    200—   500  acres,    per    £1         


,.  500-  700 
„  700—  850 
„  850-1.150 

„  l,ir>0-2,200      ,. 


Dark  Brown. 
Dark  Green. 
Dark  Kcd. 
Light  Drown. 
Light  Red. 


over  2,200      LH»h«  Green. 


NOTP..— This  Map  should  be  compared  with  that  opposite  page  I'tl.T 


PERIOD    IV 

FROM  THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY  TO    THE   EVE 
OF  THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION 

(1509-1760) 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII.,  AND  ECONOMIC  CHANGES  IN 
THE  SIXTEENTH  CENTURY 

§  122.  Henry  VIII .'s  Wastefulness. 
HENRY  VIII.  came  to  the  throne  in  1509.  He  succeeded 
to  a  full  treasury l  left  by  his  thrifty  but  grasping  father, 
who  had  replenished  it  by  exactions  from  the  general  pros- 
perity of  the  country  at  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
But  he  soon  dissipated  the  whole  of  these  accumulations. 
He  spent  a  great  deal  of  money  in  subsidising  the  Emperor 
Maximilian,2  and  in  interfering  in  foreign  affairs,  in  which 
he  was  not  very  successful,  in  the  hope  of  winning  for  him- 
self a  military  reputation  and  a  leading  place  in  the  ranks 
of  European  powers.3  His  continental  wars  and  alliances 
cost  him  dear,  or  rather  they  cost  the  English  people  dear, 
for  he  not  only  exhausted  the  patience  of  Parliament  by 
his  requests,  but  had  recourse  to  other  exactions  in  the 
shape  of  benevolences  and  fines.4  His  apologists  have 
endeavoured  to  prove  that  personally  Henry  VIII.  was  not 
extravagant,  and  that  his  personal  expenses  did  not  greatly 
exceed  those  of  his  somewhat  penurious  parent.6  But  the 

1  See  note  3  above,  p.  196.        2  Green,  History  of  English  People,  ii.  109. 

*  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  he  realised  this  ambition  and  raised  Eng- 
land to  "  the  first  rank  among  European  nations"  (Burrows,  Commentaries, 
p.  253),  and  that  his  foreign  policy  connected  England  with  the  Continent 
to  the  advantage  of  commerce  and  the  middle  classes  (p.  257).  But  no  one 
can  deny  that  he  spent  money  recklessly  in  so  doing,  and  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  the  ultimate  result  was  worth  this  vast  expenditure. 

4  He  had  exhausted  the  treasury  and  subsidies  very  early  by  his  French 
wars,  1513-1514  A.D.,  though  at  the  conclusion  he  got  a  large  sum  of  money 
from  the  French  king,  Annals  of  Engltnd,  p.  288.  Cf.  Green,  History, 
ii.  93.  "  The  millions  left  by  his  father  were  exhausted,  his  subjects  had 
been  drained  by  repeated  subsidies."  For  the  later  attempts  to  obtain 
money,  especially  in  1523  and  1525,  cf.  Green,  ii.  116,  117,  121,  122. 

8  Cf.  Froude,  History,  i.  39,  who  says  Henry  VIL's  expenses  were  a  little 
over  £14,000  a  year,  out  of  which  were  defrayed  the  whole  coat  of  the 
king's  establishment,  expenses  of  entertaining  foreign  ambassadors,  main- 


200  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

fact  remains  that  he  managed  to  spend  all  his  father's 
accumulations,  over  a  million  and  three-quarters  sterling, 
before  he  had  been  on  the  throne  many  years,1  that  he  had 
to  repudiate  his  debts,2  that  he  was  addicted  to  gambling 
in  private  3  as  well  as  to  spending  the  nation's  money  reck- 
lessly in  public,  and  that  he  left  to  his  unfortunate  young 
son  Edward  VI.  a  treasury  not  only  exhausted  of  cash  but 
burdened  with  unpaid  debts.*  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that 
he  roused  open  revolt  by  his  attempts  to  obtain  funds  by 
ordinary  methods  ;5  and  it  was  probably  the  difficulties  which 
he  found  in  raising  money  by  taxation  that  formed  a  very 
strong  incentive  for  his  spoliation  of  the  monasteries  and 
debasement  of  the  currency.  No  doubt  some  excuse  is  to 
be  found  for  Henry's  enormous  expenditure  in  the  necessi- 
ties of  foreign  politics  and  the  wars  with  France  and  Scot- 
land, but  even  in  time  of  peace  his  expenditure  seems  to 
have  been  extravagant.  The  cost  of  his  household  estab- 
lishments, and  those  of  his  children,  was  simply  enormous ; 
for  the  establishments  of  Mary,  Edward,  and  even  Elizabeth 
were  each  more  costly  than  the  whole  annual  charge  of  his 
father's  household.6  His  extravagance  was  mouumental, 

tenance  of  the  Yeomen  of  the  Guard,  retinues  of  servants,  and  all  outlay 
not  connected  with  public  business.  Under  Henry  VHI.  these  expenses 
were  £19,894,  16s.  8d.,  equal  to  some  £240,000  of  our  money.  But  the 
question  remains,  where  did  all  the  money  go  that  Henry  VIII.  obtained 
by  various  means  ?  It  has  never  been  properly  accounted  for,  and  these 
household  accounts  evidently  do  not  represent  his  entire  expenditure. 

1  Qf.  Green,  ii.  93,  where  the  reference  is  to  1514  A.  D. 

2  By  the  35  Henry  VHL,  c.  12,   "all  loans  made  to  the  king  were 
remitted  and  released,"  and  the  creditors  got  nothing.     Froude,  iv.  13,  is 
"unable  to  see  the  impropriety  of  this  proceeding,"  apparently  regarding 
it  as  only  another  form  of  taxation.     But  the  creditors  must  have  thought 
differently. 

8  Cf.  the  note  in  Froude,  History,  i.  30,  and  the  Privy  Purse  Expense*  of 
Henry  VIII. 

4  Cf.  Froude,  History,  v.  119-123,  who  details  the  exhaustion  of  the 
Treasury  early  in  Edward  VI. 's  reign  and  Northumberland's  desperate 
attempts  to  fill  it. 

6  As  in  the  revolts  of  1525  in  Suffolk  and  Kent  (Green,  History,  ii.  122), 
when  a  tenth  was  demanded  from  all  the  laity  and  a  fourth  from  the 
clergy.  The  royal  demand  for  money  had  to  be  abandoned,  Annals  of 
England,  p.  293. 

6  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  321 ;  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  28.  The  accounts  are 
preserved  in  the  Record  Office. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  201 

though  where  his  money  went  he  could  not  himself  dis- 
cover. Wolsey  said  of  him,  "  Rather  than  miss  any  part  of 
his  will,  he  will  endanger  one  half  of  his  kingdom." 1  As  a 
matter  of  fact  he  succeeded  in  impoverishing  the  whole  of  it2 
Nevertheless,  it  is  curious  to  notice  that  Henry  VIII. 
did  not  by  any  means  entirely  lose  the  popularity  of 
his  subjects.  He  was  certainly  feared,  but  he  was  also 
loved,  and  even  remained  popular  in  spite  of  his  treatment 
of  his  wives  and  the  debasement  of  the  currency.8  It  has 
shrewdly  been  remarked  that  this  was  because  he  under- 
stood his  people  thoroughly,  knowing  exactly  how  far  he 
could  go  and  how  much  they  would  bear.4  But  even  with- 
out this,  though  it  is  probably  a  very  true  explanation  of  the 
matter,  his  popularity  need  cause  no  surprise  to  any  one  who 
understands  the  relations  of  king  and  people  and  realises  the 
combined  ignorance  and  superficiality  of  the  mass  of  man- 
kind. A  very  cursory  glance  at  history  shows  us  that  the 
best  rulers  have  not  always  been  the  most  popular ; 6  that 
even  Nero  had  his  supporters ;  and  that  during  a  prince's 
lifetime  the  outside  populace  have  only  the  very  faintest 
knowledge  of  what  goes  on  inside  a  court,  while  they  base 
their  fluctuating  affections  or  dislikes  upon  the  casual  public 
appearances  of  a  monarch  and  the  untrustworthy  rumours 
which,  even  in  the  most  democratic  country,  are  the  utmost 
that  is  allowed  to  penetrate  beyond  a  privileged  Court 
circle.  Moreover,  after  he  had  seen  how  his  exactions  had 
angered  his  people  in  1525,  Henry  took  care  in  future  to 
obtain  money  by  means  quite  as  effectual,  but  more  under- 
hand, and  thus  avoided  another  popular  outbreak.  But 
the  fact  of  his  popularity  need  not  detain  us.  It  does 
not  alter  the  other  facts  of  his  cruelty,  selfishness,  and 
robbery. 

1  Quoted  by  Green,  Hittory,  i.  88. 

•Even  Froude  admits  this,  for  he  records  "the  general  distress"  at 
beginning  of  Edward  VI.  "s  reign  (iv.  352)  owing  to  the  base  money  and 
other  causes.  He  admits  that  Henry's  household  expense*  had  doubled 
since  the  beginning  of  his  reign  (iv.  251). 

*  Burrows,  Commentaries  on  the  History  of  England,  p.  276. 
«/&. 

•  E.g.  William  IH  of  England;   <j/".  Macaulay's  History,  ch.  xi.,  and 
passim. 


202  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§  123.  The  Dissolution  of  the  Monasteries. 
Having  wasted  the  carefully  accumulated  treasures  of  his 
father,  Henry  sought  for  further  supplies.  They  were 
gained  at  first  by  increased  taxation,  but  as  this  money  was 
spent  in  the  French  wars,1  Henry  was  soon  in  difficulties 
again.  Then  a  great  temptation  came  upon  him.  The 
monasteries  2  suggested  themselves  to  him  as  an  easy  prey, 
and  he  knew  that  an  attack  upon  them  would  not  displease 
the  growing  Protestant  party  in  the  country.  It  is  possible 
that  he  was  even  animated  by  reforming  zeal,  and,  if  so,  it 
was  fortunate  that  he  was  able  to  satisfy  his  conscience  and 
to  fill  his  purse  at  the  same  moment.  The  religious  houses 
were  in  many  cases  certainly  not  fulfilling  their  ancient 
functions  properly,3  and  were  often  far  from  being  the  homes 
of  religious  virtue.4  Excuses  and  even  reasons  were  easily 
found  ;  in  1536  the  smaller  monasteries  with  an  income 
below  £200  a  year  were  suppressed,6  and  in  1539  the 
larger  ones  were  similarly  treated.6  In  all,  about  a 
thousand  houses  were  suppressed,7  the  annual  income  of 
which  was  some  £160,000,  equivalent  to  more  than  two 
millions  sterling  of  our  present  money.8  Half  a  dozen 
bishoprics  and  a  few  grammar  schools  were  founded,  some 
fortifications  built,  and  temporary  work  found  for  the 
unemployed  out  of  the  proceeds  of  this  spoliation,9  in  order 
to  blind  the  eyes  of  the  people  at  large.  But  with  these 

1  Green,  History,  ii.  93. 

2  Reforms  had  been  instituted  among  the  clergy  before  this,  even  in. 
Henry  VII. 's  reign.     Cf.  Froude,  History,  i.  97-99 

*E.g.  The  duty  of  relieving  the  poor  is  said  to  have  been  neglected. 
Froude,  i.  76.  For  other  charges  see  ib.  ii.  302,  sqq. 

4  Cf.  the  state  of  things  at  the  Lichfield  Nunnery,  Froude,  ii.  319 ;  at  Foun- 
tains Abbey,  where  the  Abbot  kept  six  women,  ib.  p.  321,  and  c.  x.  generally. 

6  By  the  Act  27  Henry  VIII.  c.  28.         6Act  31  Henry  VHI.  c.  13. 

7  Green,  History,  ii.  101  gives  1021  altogether.     Bishop  Creighton  (Diet. 
Eng.  History,  s.v.  Monastid&m)  gives  only  616  as  the  total.     "  There  were 
186  Benedictines,  173  Augustinians,  101  Cistercians,  33  of  the  four  orders 
of  friars,  32  Preraonstratensians,  28  of  the  Knights  Hospitallers,  25  Gil- 
bertines,  20  Cluniacs,  9  Carthusians,  and  a  few  other  orders.     The  total 
number  of  monasteries  was  616,  and  their  revenues  were  approximately 
valued  at  £142,914  yearly." 

8  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  322,  Hist.  Agric.  iv.  29. 

9  Green,  History,  ii.  201  ;  Froude,  History,  ii.  345,  iii.  207-10. 


THE  REIGN   OF  HENRY  VIII  203 

paltry  exceptions  the  whole  of  that  vast  capital  and  revenue 
was  granted  to  courtiers  and  favourites,  sold  at  nominal 
prices,  or  frittered  away  by  the  king  and  his  satellites.1 

§  124.  Results  of  the  Suppression. 

Although  the  mass  of  the  people  did  not  protest  very 
vigorously  against  this  piece  of  royal  robbery,  many  of  them 
witnessed  with  silent  dismay  the  destruction  of  ancient  insti- 
tutions that  had  taken  at  one  time  an  important  share  in 
the  national  life.  It  is  true  that  the  monasteries  had,  so  to 
speak,  worn  themselves  out  and  outgrown  their  usefulness.2 
Some  were  deeply  in  debt,  some  almost  deserted,  almost  all 
had  misapplied  their  revenues.3  Some  reform,  at  least,  was 
necessary,  perhaps  even  a  total  suppression,  but  undoubtedly 
the  worst  feature  about  the  whole  transaction  was  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  spoil.4  In  any  case  the  country  districts, 
if  none  other,  lost  in  many  instances  (though  not  in  all) 
hospitable  and  charitable  friends ;  and  discontent,  eagerly 
fomented  of  course  by  the  dispossessed  monks,6  broke  out 
into  open  insurrection.  The  well-known  revolt  called  the 
Pilgrimage  of  Grace  (1536)  was  an  instance  of  this,  though 
it  had  also  other  causes,  connected  with  the  general  agrarian 
change  which  was  then  taking  place.  These  causes  may  be 
detailed  in  the  words  of  those  concerned  in  the  rebellion, 
words  which  give  a  very  clear  insight  into  the  grievances 
that  were  vexing  men's  minds  in  the  rural  districts :  "  The 
poor  people  and  commons,"  said  one,  "  be  sore  oppressed  by 
gentlemen  because  their  living  is  taken  away."6  This  is 
vague,  but  another  witness  tells  us  more  explicitly  in  what 
the  oppression  consisted.  He  mentions  "  the  pulling  down 
of  villages  and  farms,  raising  of  rents,  enclosures,  intakes  of 
the  commons,  worshipful  men  taking  yeomen's  offices,  that 
is,  becoming  dealers  in  farm  produce.7  "  One  great  reason 

1Many  of  the  new  aristocracy  of  Henry  VIII. 'B  reign  owe  their  riches 
to  this  spoliation.  "  The  Russells  and  Cavendishes  rose  from  obscurity 
through  the  grants  of  church  lands."  Green,  History ,  ii.  201. 

*  Burrows,  Commentaries,  p.  270.  *  Ik. 

«/&..p.  271.  8 76.,  272. 

•Evidence  of  Geo.  Gisborne,  RoUs  Howie,  JUSS.,  miscellaneous,  first 
series,  132  (Froude).  7  William  SUpleton's  evidence,  ib. 


204  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

of  the  discontent  is  thus  clearly  seen  to  be  the  enclosures, 
and  another  was  the  raising  of  rents ;  and  grievances  like 
these,  coupled  with  religious  feeling,  fear  of  change,  and 
sympathy  for  the  dispossessed  monks,  were  sufficient  to 
give  rise  to  a  very  considerable  outbreak,  which  was  only 
suppressed  with  some  difficulty.1  The  economic  disturbances 
which  resulted,  though  not  so  clearly  seen,  were  far  more 
severe.  They  were  acute  enough  from  the  mere  fact  of  so 
much  wealth  having  suddenly  changed  hands  and  being 
spent  with  reckless  prodigality.  It  is  said  that  one-fifth,2 
or  even  one-third,3  of  the  land  in  the  kingdom  was  held  by 
the  monasteries,  and  this  was  now  transferred  from  the  hold 
of  the  Church  into  the  hands  of  a  new  set  of  nobles  and 
landed  gentry,  created  from  the  dependants  and  followers  of 
Henry's  court.*  These  were  enriched,  but  the  former 
tenants  of  the  monasteries  and  the  poorer  class  of  labourers 
suffered  greatly.6  Hence  serious  results  followed.  Many 
of  the  monastic  lands  were  held  by  tenants  upon  the  stock 
and  land  lease  system,6  spoken  of  before ;  but,  when  these 
monastic  lands  were  suddenly  transferred  into  the  clutches 
of  Henry's  new  and  grasping  nobility,  or  were  bought  by 
merchants  and  manufacturers  who  only  cared  for  profits,7 
the  stock  was  confiscated  and  sold  off,  while  the  money  rent 
was  raised.  The  new  owners  did  not  care  for  the  slow, 
though  really  lucrative,  system  of  providing  the  tenant  with 
a  certain  amount  of  stock  for  his  land,  but  simply  wished 
to  get  all  the  money  they  could  without  delay.  They  often 
evicted  the  tenantry  and  lived  as  absentees  on  the  profits  of 
their  flocks.8  The  result  was  that  the  poorer  tenants  were 

1  Annals  of  England,  p.  302,  303.          2  Green,  History,  ii.  201. 

3  Rogers,  Hist.   Agric.t   iv.   113;   Six  Centuries,  p.  323,  who  however 
seems  to  think  it  rather  doubtful. 

4  Cf.  Froude,  History,  iii.  206,  where  he  mentions  the  novi  homines. 

5  Cf.  the  contemporary  evidence  in  the  Cole  MSS.  (Brit.  Museum)  xii. 
fol.  5.     The  Fall  of  Religious  Houses:  "They  never  raised  any  rent  nor 
took  any  incomes  or  fines  of  their  tenants."    Again,  "If  any  poor  house- 
holder lacked  seed  to  sow  his  land,  or  bread,  corn,  or  malt  before  harvest, 
and  came  to  a  monastery,  he  should  not  have  gone  away  again  without 
help."    Of  course,  some  allowance  must  be  made  for  the  evident  friendly 
bias  of  the  author. 

6  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  323.  7  Froude,  History,  iii.  p.  206. 
8  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  p.  434. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  205 

almost  ruined,  and  it  seems  fairly  evident  that  pauperism- 
was  much  increased. 

§  125.  Pauperism. 

Whether  it  is  true  that  the  monasteries  relieved  what 
poverty  there  was,  or  not,  or  whether  in  pre-Reformation 
days  the  charitable  instincts  of  the  general  public  were 
more  actively  encouraged  l  by  their  religion,  may  still  be  a 
matter  of  dispute,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
growth  of  pauperism  in  the  days  of  Henry  VIII.  Of  course 
it  had  existed  before,  and  measures  had  been  passed  for  its 
relief,2  but  henceforth  it  becomes  a  more  noticeable  pheno- 
menon, and  its  difficulties  increase  instead  of  diminishing. 
Its  growth  was  due  to  the  agrarian  difficulties  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  especially  to  the  enclosures,  and  perhaps  in 
some  measure  to  that  peculiarly  modern  development  of  society 
by  which,  as  the  wealth  of  the  nation  increases,  it  seems  to 
become  vested  in  fewer  hands,  while  the  numbers  of  the 
poor  increase  with  the  accumulation  of  riches.  Be  that  as 
it  may,  legislation  was  found  necessary  before  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  monasteries,  though  the  suppression  must  have 
given  an  impetus  to  the  other  already  existing  causes  of 
trouble.  Two  acts  were  passed  in  the  middle  of  Henry's 
reign.  The  first  (1531)  mentions  the  increase  of  "vaga- 
bonds and  beggars,"  and  the  crimes  they  commit,  and  en- 
acts that  the  justices,  mayors,  and  other  authorities  "  shall 
make  diligent  search  and  inquiry  of  all  aged  poor  and  im- 
potent persons  which  live,  or  of  necessity  be  compelled  to 
live,  by  alms  of  the  charity  of  the  people  " ;  that  they  then 
shall  only  allow  them  to  beg,  after  giving  them  a  proper 
license  to  do  so,  within  certain  limits,  while  begging  outside 
such  limits,  or  without  permission,  was  to  be  punished  by 
imprisonment  in  the  stocks  and  by  whipping.8  The  second 
Act  (1536),  evidently  framed  because  the  first  was  unsatis- 
factory, forbids  private  persons  to  give  money  to  beggars,  but 
makes  provision  for  a  charity  organisation  fund,  to  be  col- 
lected by  the  church  wardens  on  Sundays  and  holidays  in 

1  Froude,  History,  i.  77,  and  c/.  iv.  355. 

8  Above,  p.  194,  note  3.  »  The  22  Henry  VIII.,  c.  12. 


206  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  churches.  The  parish  priest  was  to  keep  an  account  of 
receipts  and  expenditure.  All  idle  children,  over  five  years 
of  age,  were  to  be  appointed  "  to  matters  of  husbandry,  or 
other  craft  or  labour  to  be  taught."  But  for  the  "  sturdy 
vagabond  "  there  was  no  mercy ;  if  found  begging  a  second 
time,  he  was  to  be  mutilated  by  the  loss  of  the  whole  or 
part  of  his  right  ear ;  if  caught  a  third  time,  to  be  put  to 
death  "  as  a  felon  and  an  enemy  of  the  commonwealth."  l 
So  the  law  remained  for  sixty  years ;  unrepealed  through 
the  reigns  of  Edward  VI.  and  Mary ;  reconsidered,  but  again 
formally  passed,  under  Elizabeth.  "  It  was  the  express  con- 
viction of  the  English  nation  that  it  was  better  for  a  man 
not  to  live  at  all  than  to  live  a  profitless  and  worthless 
life."2  But  the  simple,  if  sanguinary,  measures  of  the 
Tudor  age  were  found  in  later  days  to  be  insufficient  to 
cure  an  evil  of  which  simplicity  is  unfortunately  far  from 
being  a  characteristic. 

§  126.  The  Issuing  of  Base  Coin. 

A  few  years  after  the  dissolution  of  the  monasteries, 
Henry  was  in  difficulties  again.  He  dared  not  ask  his 
Parliament  for  further  supplies  so  soon  after  his  last  piece 
of  plunder,  and  therefore  he  betook  himself  to  a  still  more 
underhand  kind  of  robbery.  In  1527  he  had  begun  to 
debase  the  currency,3  and  now  he  repeated  this  criminal 
action  in  1543,  1545,  and  1546.4  The  process  was  con- 
tinued by  the  guardians  of  Edward  VI.,  till  an  almost  in- 
credible amount  of  alloy  was  added  to  the  coins.  Already, 
in  1549,  the  debasement  had  reached  six  ounces  of  alloy 
in  the  pound  of  silver  ;  but  in  1551  there  were  nine  ounces, 
a  pound  of  this  base  mixture  being  coined  into  seventy-two 
shillings.5  This  debasement  forms  a  landmark  in  English 
industrial  history,  almost  as  noticeable  as  events  like  the 

1  The  27  Henry  VIII.,  c.  25.  2  Froude,  History,  i.  88. 

3  Cunningham,  i.  482.    He  coined  a  pound  of  silver  of  the  old  touch  into 
45s.  in  1527.     See  Dr  Cunningham's  strong  remarks  on  the  iniquity  of  the 
Tudor  kings. 

4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  342.     In  1543  the  debasement  was  2  ounces 
of  alloy  in  12,  in  1545  it  was  6,  in  1546  it  was  8.     The  coinage  was  re- 
formed by  Elizabeth.     Cf.  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  186-200. 

5  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  343. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  207 

first  Poor  Law  or  the  Plague.  Its  effect  was  not  felt  im- 
mediately, but  it  was  none  the  less  real.1  The  chief  point 
that  concerned  the  labourer  was  that  prices  rapidly  rose, 
but  that,  as  is  always  the  case,  the  rise  of  wages  did  not 
coincide  with  this  inflation,  and  when  they  did  rise,  they 
did  not  do  so  in  a  fair  proportion.  The  necessaries  of  life 
rose  in  proportion  of  one  to  two  and  one-half ;  wages, 
when  they  finally  rose,  only  in  the  proportion  of  one  to  one 
and  one-half.2  When  too  late,  it  was  recognised  that  the 
issue  of  base  money  was  the  cause  of  dearth  in  the  realm, 
and  Latimer  lamented  the  fact  in  his  sermons.  Meanwhile, 
the  mischief  had  been  done. 

The  government  was  almost  bankrupt,  and  when  Henry 
VIII.  died  he  bequeathed  to  his  young  son,  instead  of  the 
magnificent  fortune  which  his  own  father  had  amassed,  a 
treasury  not  only  empty,  but  completely  overwhelmed  in 
debt.3  These  debts  were  augmented  by  the  "  wilful  govern- 
ment "  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  while  the  council  of  nobles 
who  surrounded  the  youthful  Edward  only  made  matters 
worse  by  their  unpatriotic  rapacity. 

§  127.   The  Confiscation  of  the  Gild  Lands. 

In  the  very  first  year  of  Edward's  reign  a  fresh  piece  of 
robbery  was  carried  out.  This  was  the  confiscation  of  all 
chantries  and  gild  lands,  planned  by  Henry  VIII.4  but 
executed  by  the  Protector  Somerset.  All  lands  belonging 
to  "colleges,  chantries,  and  free  chapels,"  were  in  1547 
given  to  the  king,6  and  it  was  professed  by  the  Act  that 
their  revenues  would  be  given  to  the  establishment  of 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  344. 

3  Ib.,  p.  345;  cf.  also  Froude,  History,  v.  95.  "The  measure  of  corn 
that  was  wont  to  be  sold  at  2s.  or  3s.  was  at  6s.  8d.  in  March  1551,  and 
30s.  in  March  1552.  A  cow  that  had  been  worth  6s.  8d.  sold  for  40s." 

8  See  Northumberland's  letter  to  the  Council ;  MSS.  Domevlic,  Edward 
VI.,  vol.  xv.  (Froude),  where  he  speaks  of  "the  great  debts  wherein,  for 
one  great  part,  he  [Edward  VI.]  was  left  by  his  Highnesse's  father,  and 
augmented  by  the  wilful  government  of  the  late  Duke  of  Somerset,  who 
took  upon  him  the  Protectorship  and  government  of  his  own  authority." 
Of  course  Northumberland's  evidence  is  not  altogether  unprejudiced. 

*  In  the  Act  37  Henry  VIII.,  c.  17.  cf.  Froude,  History,  iv.,  p.  193. 

5  By  the  Act  1  Edw.  VI.,  c.  14. 


208  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

grammar  schools,  the  maintenance  of  vicarages,  and  the 
support  of  preachers.  Some  portion  was  so  applied — pro- 
bably to  salve  the  consciences  of  the  spoilers — but  by  far 
the  greater  part  was  shared  among  the  members  of  the  govern- 
ment or  devoted  to  pay  off  some  of  the  late  King's  debts.1 
A  portion  of  the  lands  so  confiscated  was  the  property  of 
the  craft-gilds  both  in  town  and  country,  having  been 
acquired  partly  by  bequests  from  members,  and  partly  by 
purchase  from  the  funds  of  the  gilds.  The  revenues  derived 
from  them  were  used  for  lending,  without  usury,  to  poorer 
members  of  the  gilds,  for  apprenticing  poor  children,  for 
widows'  pensions,  and,  above  all,  for  the  relief  of  destitute 
members  of  the  craft.2  Thus  the  labourer  of  that  time  had 
in  the  funds  of  the  gild  a  kind  of  insurance  money,  while 
the  gild  itself  fulfilled  all  the  functions  of  a  benefit  society. 
Somerset  procured  the  Act  for  suppressing  them  on  the  plea 
that  these  lands  were  associated  with  superstitious  uses. 
Only  the  property  of  the  London  gilds  was  left  untouched. 

The  effects  of  this  confiscation  were  felt  perhaps  indirectly 
more  than  directly,  but  were  none  the  less  serious.  No 
doubt  the  landed  property  of  the  gilds  was  largely  devoted 
to  the  maintenance  of  masses  for  departed  members  of  the 
society,  but  assistance  was  also  freely  given  to  members 
in  distress,  to  enable  them  to  tide  over  hard  times.3  These 
institutions  rather  prevented  men  from  falling  into  pauperism 
than  actually  relieved  it  to  any  great  extent,*  but  the  net 
result  was  of  course  much  the  same.  Their  suppression 
certainly  must  have  helped  to  swell  the  number  of  unto- 
ward influences  that  combined  at  this  period  to  depress  the 
condition  of  the  working  classes. 

Why  this  abolition  was  not  more  generally  resented  is  a 
point  of  some  interest.  In  the  first  place,  the  lands  of  the 
religious  gilds  and  craft  gilds  were  confiscated  together  on 

1  Annals  of  England,  pp.  316,  317.     Froude,  History,  iv.,  p.  313,  re- 
marks : — "  The  carcase  was  cast  out  into  the  fields  and  the  vultures  of  all 
breeds  and  orders  flocked  to  the  banquet." 

2  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  347 ;  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  6. 

3  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.,  p.  480. 

4  lb.,  p.  481 ;  and  cf.  on  the  other  hand  Prof.  Ashley's  remarks  in  the 
Political  Science  Quarterly,  vol.  iv.,  No.  3,  p.  402,  who  rather  minimises 
the  usefulness  of  the  gilds. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  209 

the  plea  above  mentioned,  and  thus  the  difference  between 
them  was  confused  in  the  eyes  of  the  Protestant  party 
then  in  the  ascendant.  Then,  again,  the  London  gilds 
were  spared  because  of  their  power,1  and  thus  it  was  made 
their  interest  not  to  interfere  with  the  destruction  of  their 
provincial  brethren.  The  nobles  were  bought  off  with 
presents  gained  from  the  funds  of  the  gilds.  Moreover,  the 
craft  gilds  in  the  country  towns  were  becoming  close  corpor- 
ations, whose  advantages  were  often  monopolised  by  a  few 
powerful  members.  This  led,  as  we  saw,2  to  the  manufac- 
ture of  cloth  spreading  from  the  towns  into  industrial 
villages  in  the  rural  districts,  where  perhaps  the  mass  of  the 
population,  not  perceiving  the  full  significance  of  the  Act,  did 
not  object  to  a  measure  which  struck  a  blow  at  the  town 
"  mysteries."  8  But,  nevertheless,  a  great  deal  of  discontent 
was  aroused.  Somerset  became  very  unpopular  and  in- 
surrections broke  out  in  many  parts  of  the  country,  the 
most  dangerous  being  in  Cornwall,  Devonshire,  and  Norfolk 
(1549).4  They  were  caused  not  only  by  this  spoliation  but 
by  agrarian  discontent  as  well,  added  to  religious  distur- 
bances, but  German  and  Italian  mercenaries  were  introduced 
to  put  them  down,6  and  the  protests  of  the  people  were 
everywhere  choked  in  their  own  blood. 

§  128.  Bankruptcy   and  Eapacity  of  Edward    VI. 'a 
Oovernment 

These  insurrections  serve  to  show  the  anger  of  the  nation 
at  the  atrocious  rapacity  and  misgovernment  of  the  nobles 
who  surrounded  the  boy-king  Edward.  And  indeed  the 
nation  had  a  right  to  be  angry.  The  government  was 
practically  bankrupt,6  and  had  to  resort  to  the  most  desper- 
ate measures  to  obtain  money  for  immediate  necessities. 
The  currency  had  been  so  debased  that  they  dare  not  debase 
it  any  further,  and  it  only  remained  to  acknowledge  the 
fact  openly,  to  throw  the  burden  of  it  upon  the  country,  and 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  6.  J  Above,  p.  146. 

8  Ashley,  in  Political  Science  Quarterly,  Vol.  iv.,  No.  3,  p.  402. 
<  Annals  of  England,  p.  318;  Froude,  History,  iv.  408,  440-453. 
8  Froude,  Hittory,  iv.,  pp.  445,  447.  6  Froude,  History,  *.  pp.  9,  110. 

O 


210  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

to  call  the  existing  coinage  down  to  its  actual  value.1  "  By 
this  desperate  remedy  every  holder  of  a  silver  coin  lost  upon 
it  the  difference  between  its  cost  when  it  passed  into  his 
hands  and  its  actual  value  in  the  market.  On  the  30th 
April  1551  the  Council  passed  a  resolution  that  in  future 
the  shilling  should  pass  for  only  ninepence,  and  the  groat 
(4d)  for  threepence.2  At  the  same  time,  such  was  the 
unabashed  audacity  of  this  gang  of  noble  swindlers,  they 
contemplated  a  fresh  issue  of  base  money ;  3  but,  postponing 
this  wickedness  for  a  time,  they  had  recourse  to  the  great 
banking  firm  of  the  Fuggers  at  Antwerp,  and  raised  loans 
at  ruinous  rates  of  interest.4  In  the  month  of  May,  how- 
ever, they  issued  £80,000  of  silver  coin,  of  which  two-thirds 
was  alloy,  and  in  June  £40,000,  containing  no  less  than 
three-quarters  alloy.  "This  was  the  last  grasp  at  the 
departing  prey,  and  perhaps  it  transpired  to  the  world  :  for 
so  profound,  and  so  wide  was  the  public  distrust  that  when 
the  first  fall  in  the  coin  took  effect  prices  everywhere  rose 
rather  than  declined,  even  allowing  for  the  difference  of 
denomination."5  Then  in  August  a  proclamation  was 
issued  by  which  the  shilling  passed  for  no  more  than  six- 
pence,6 and  again  the  nation  had  to  bear  the  loss. 

But  the  difficulties  of  the  Government  were  far  from 
being  at  an  end,  and  fresh  means  had  to  be  devised  for 
extorting  money  from  an  exhausted  country.  As  early  as 
1549  Commissioners  had  been  appointed  to  make  inven- 
tories of  Church  ornaments,  jewels,  vestments  and  other  pro- 
perty, even  including  the  Church  bells  7  ;  but  in  the  autumn 
and  winter  of  1552-3  no  less  than  four  commissions  were 
appointed  with  this  object,  "to  go  again  over  the  oft- 
trodden  ground  and  glean  the  last  spoils  which  could  be 
gathered  from  the  Churches.8  Vestments,  copes,  plate,  even 
the  coins  in  the  poor-boxes  were  taken  from  the  churches  in 
the  City  of  London.  A  sweep  as  complete  cleared  the 

1  Froude,  History,  v.  pp.  9-15. 

2Ib.,v.  p.  10.  3/6.,  p.  11. 

4  Ib.,  p.  11  and  p.  112.    They  had  borrowed  from  Antwerp  Jews  before, 
iv.  p.  399. 

5  Ib.,  p.  12.       «  Ib.,  p.  13.        7  In  Feb.  1549,  Annals  of  England,  p.  31?. 
8  Froude,  History,  v.  p.  119. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  211 

parish  churches  throughout  the  country."  l  Other  measures 
as  mean  and  as  desperate  were  also  taken,  and  a  subsidy 
was  granted  by  the  Parliament  of  1 5  5  3 ;  2  but  all  attempts 
to  fill  the  treasury  were  rendered  useless  by  the  extraordin- 
ary rapacity  8  of  the  '  Council  of  the  Minority,'  the  nobles 
who  governed  during  the  minority  of  Edward  VI.  Estates 
worth  half-a-million  sterling  in  the  money  of  those  days,  or 
about  five  millions  in  the  money  of  our  own  time,  had  been 
appropriated  by  these  ministers,4  and  though  the  Duke  of 
Northumberland  accused  his  rival  Somerset  of  "  wilful  mis- 
governance  "  and  waste  of  treasure,5  he  himself  obtained  the 
suppression 6  of  the  enormously  rich  bishopric  of  Durham, 
and  the  whole  of  its  temporalities  were  granted  to  him  as 
a  County  Palatine.  It  is  no  wonder  that  with  ministers 
such  as  this  the  country  narrowly  escaped  ruin,  nor  could  it 
have  passed  through  this  period  as  well  as  it  did,  had  it  not 
been  for  the  undercurrent  of  sound  prosperity  inherited  from 
the  latter  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  But  the  situation 
was  most  serious,  especially  in  the  rural  districts,  and  these 
now  demand  our  attention. 

§    129.   The  Agrarian  Situation, 

Of  course,  by  this  time,  the  symmetry  of  the  old  manorial 
system  was  almost  entirely  destroyed  7  by  the  revolution  in 
agriculture  to  which  we  have  already  alluded,  and  which 
was  now  making  itself  felt  increasingly  every  day.  It  was 
inevitable  that  such  should  be  the  case,  and  the  ultimate 
benefit  was,  no  doubt,  very  great,  but  the  immediate  effects 
were  productive  of  considerable  hardship  to  many  of  the 
smaller  men.  It  is  true,  as  has  been  pointed  out  by  a 
great  German  economist,8  that,  after  all,  agriculture  in  this 
period  (apart  from  the  special  stimulus  of  wool-growing) 

1  Froude,  History,  v.  pp.  120,  121.  2  Act  7  Edward  VI.,  c.  12. 

3  Froude,  History,  iv.  397,  mentions  "the  waste  and  luxury"  of  Edward 
VI. 's  nobles  as  "the  preponderating  cause "  of  the  pecuniary  difficulties  of 
the  time. 

4  Froude,  History,  v.  p.  128,  and  MS.  Domestic,  Edward  VI.,  vol.  xix. 

6  See  preamble  to  Act  7  Edward  VI.  c.  12,  inspired  by  Northumberland. 
•  By  the  Act  7  Edward  VI.  c.  17. 

7  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  ii.  ii.,  p.  263. 

8Boscher,  Nationalcekonomie  des  Ackerbatun,  bk.  ii.,  ch.  ii. 


212  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

was  only  passing  through  the  second  of  the  three  great 
stages  which  mark  its  economic  evolution.  In  these  we 

O 

may  distinguish  (1)  the  old  open-field  husbandry  of  early 
times,  so  closely  associated  with  the  manorial  system  ;  (2) 
convertible  husbandry,  wherein  the  land  is  used  for  a  few 
years  as  pasture  and  then  put  under  crops,  a  method  which 
necessitates  enclosures  in  order  that  it  may  be  properly 
carried  out  in  a  systematic  and  orderly  manner ;  and  (3) 
the  more  modern  method  of  rotation  of  crops,  which  begins 
in  England  much  later  than  the  period  with  which  we  are  now 
dealing.  But  the  process  of  this  evolution  with  its  resulting 
enclosures,  added  to  the  ever-increasing  sheep  farms,  pressed 
hardly  upon  the  smaller  cultivators  ;  and  in  the  reigns  of 
Henry  VIII.  and  Edward  VI.  we  cannot  help  being  struck 
with  the  terrible  discontent  and  misery  of  the  rural  districts. 
The  labourers  and  small  husbandmen  were  becoming  more 
and  more  separated  from  the  land,  while  tenant  farmers  were 
ruined  with  high  rents  exacted  by  the  new  nobility.1  The 
landed  gentry  and  nobility,  however,  profited  by  this,  and 
the  merchants  grew  rich  by  their  accumulations  in  foreign 
trade.2  But  those  who  depended  directly  upon  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  land  for  their  living  suffered  severely.  There 
had  been  for  some  years  past  a  steady  rise  in  the  price  of 
wool 3  for  export,  partly  because  the  manufactures  of  the 
Netherlands  were  so  flourishing,  and  partly  owing  to  a 
general  rise  of  prices  on  the  Continent  since  the  great 
discoveries  of  silver  in  South  America.  Land-owners  saw 
that  it  was  more  immediately  profitable  to  turn  their  arable 
land  into  pasture  and  to  go  in  for  sheep  farming  on  a  large 
scale.4  They  therefore  did  three  things.  They  evicted  as 

1  Cf.  Latimer's  Sermons  (in  1548)  in  Froude,  History,  iv.  p.  356.  "  You 
landlords,  you  rent  raisers,  I  may  say  you  steplords  !  that  which  hereto- 
fore went  for  20  or  40  pounds  by  the  year,  now  is  let  for  50  or  100  pounds  : 
and  thus  is  caused  such  dearth  that  poor  men  which  live  of  their  labour 
cannot  with  the  sweat  of  their  faces  have  a  living." 

"  Michele,  the  Venetian,  says  that  many  London  merchants  were  worth 
as  much  as  £60,000  in  money  ;  the  graziers  and  the  merchants  had  made 
money  while  the  people  had  starved."  Froude,  History,  vi.  78. 

8  Rogers,  Hint.  Agric. ,  iv.  718 ;  the  average  from  1401  to  1540  was  6s.  24d. 
per  tod,  and  from  1541-82,  it  was  17s.  4d.  per  tod. 

4  Cf.  Froude,  Ch.  History,  iv,  349. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  213 

many  as  possible  of  their  smaller  tenants,  so  that,  as  Sir 
Thomas  More  tells  us,  "  in  this  way  it  comes  to  pass  that 
these  miserable  people,  men,  women,  husbands,  orphans, 
parents  with  little  children  are  all  forced  to  change  their 
seats,  without  knowing  where  to  go."  1  Then  they  raised 
the  rents  of  the  larger  tenants,  the  yeomen  and  farmers,  so 
that,  as  Latimer  mentions,  land  for  which  his  father  had 
paid  £3  or  £4  a  year,  was  in  1549  let  at  £16,  almost  to 
the  ruin  of  the  tenant.2  Thirdly,  the  large  land-owners 
took  from  the  poor  their  common  lands  by  an  unscrupulous 
system  of  enclosures.3  Wolsey  had  in  vain  endeavoured  to 
stop  their  doing  this,4  for  he  had  sagacity  enough  to 
perceive  how  it  would  pauperize  the  labourers  and  others 
who  had  valuable  rights  in  such  land.  But  enclosures  and 
evictions  went  on  in  spite  of  his  enactments,  with  the 
inevitable  result  of  the  social  disorders  already  alluded  to.6 

§    130.   The  Enclosures  of  tJie  Sixteenth  Century. 

In  speaking  of  the  enclosures  made  at  this  time  it  must 
be  remembered  that  they  were  of  three  kinds.6  (1)  There 
was  the  enclosing  of  the  lord's  demesne,  which  the  lord  had 
a  perfect  right  to  carry  out  if  he  thought  it  would  improve 
his  land,  and  of  which  no  one  could  very  well  complain. 
There  was  also  (2)  the  enclosing  of  those  strips  of  land 
belonging  to  the  lord  of  the  manor  which  lay  intermixed 

1  Utopia,  p.  64  (Morley's  edn.)  :  the  whole  of  the  first  part  of  the  Utopia 
is  well  worth  reading  for  a  description  of  the  social  and  industrial  troubles 
of  the  time. 

2  Latimer,  First  Sermon  before  Edward  VI. 

'Of.  Lever,  Sermon  in  the  Shroudes  (Arbor's  edn.)  39;  Russell,  Ket'* 
Rebellion,  50,  51 ;  Fitzherbert,  Surveyinge,  ch.  viii.  ;  Strype,  Eccles.  Mem., 
ii.  pt.  ii.  360  (referring  to  1548),  and  the  evidence  quoted  below,  pp.  214-217. 

4  Decree  in  Chancery,  July,  1518  (Brewer,  Calendar  of  State  Papers,  ii. 
1054,  No.  3297). 

8  The  most  important  of  these  risings  took  place  in  Norfolk,  where  en- 
closures had  been  made  upon  a  tremendous  scale.  Ket,  a  tanner  of 
Norwich,  took  the  lead  (in  1549)  of  a  large  body  of  some  16,000  tenants 
and  labourers,  who  demanded  the  abolition  of  the  late  enclosures  and  the 
reform  of  other  local  abuses.  The  Earl  of  Warwick  defeated  the  petitioners 
in  a  battle,  put  down  the  rising,  and  hanged  Ket  at  Norwich  Castle.  The 
farmers  and  peasantry  were  thus  cowed  into  submission.  Cf.  full  details 
in  Froude,  History,  iv.  440-453. 

•Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  IL  ii.  p.  285. 


214  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

with  the  strips  of  the  tenants  in  the  open  fields.  To  the 
enclosing  of  these  was  again  no  legal  or  moral  objection 
to  be  made,  if  properly  carried  out,  though  it  had  always 
been  the  custom  for  them  to  lie  alongside  the  others  and 
share  the  common  cultivation.  The  exceedingly  scattered 
character  of  the  several  lands  in  the  common  fields  of 
manors  must  have  been  a  serious  inconvenience  to  the 
landowner,  especially  if  he  was  non-resident,  since  he  had 
to  employ,  in  addition  to  his  own  labour  of  supervision,  the 
charge  and  risk  of  a  collector  of  rents,  and  moreover  often 
could  not  recover  arrears  unless  the  precise  ground  from 
which  the  rent  issued  was  known  and  defined,  which  often 
was  not  accurately  done.1  There  was  therefore  considerable 
inducement  to  enclose  strips  and,  if  possible,  to  throw  them 
together  contiguously.  But  there  was,  in  so  doing,  a 
considerable  opportunity  of  taking  a  piece  of  a  tenant's 
land  at  the  same  time,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt,  from  the 
nature  of  the  complaints  made,  that  this  was  frequently  done.2 
But  it  was  (3)  the  third  kind  of  enclosures  that  did  the 
most  harm  and  caused  the  bitterest  outcry  ;  that  is,  when  the 
commons  and  even  the  tenants'  own  strips  were  taken  from 
them.  It  is  true  that  by  the  old  statute  of  Merton  3  ( 1 2  3  5  -  (j) 
— a  law  passed  by  a  parliament  of  landlords — landowners 
had  been  permitted  to  appropriate  portions  of  the  "  waste  " 
over  which  the  free,  and  even  the  villein,  tenants  had  certain 
rights  of  pasturage  and  turbary,  provided  that  the  lord  left 
a  "  sufficient  quantity  "  of  common  land  for  the  use  of  the 
tenants.  But  since  there  was  no  precise  rule  as  to  what 
constituted  a  sufficient  quantity,  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
enclosing  landlords  could  do  very  much  as  they  liked  ;  and 
by  this  time  the  statute  had  been  forgotten  and  was 
entirely  neglected.  Everywhere  complaints  are  heard  of 
the  action  of  the  landowners.  But  before  giving  some 
contemporary  evidence  upon  the  subject  we  will  pause  for 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  286,  287. 

2  More,  Utopia,  p.  64  (Morley's  edn.)  says  :    "  when  an  insatiable  wretch 
resolves  to  enclose  ground,  the  owners  as  well  as  the  tenants  are  turned 
out  of  their  possessions  by  tricks  or  by  main  force,  or  being  wearied-out  by 
ill-usage  they  are  forced  to  sell  them." 

3 The  20  Henry  III.,  c.  4. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  215 

a  moment  to  notice  which  portion  of  rural  England  suffered 
most  from  these  enclosures. 

Professor  Ashley  l  has  given  a  very  complete  account  of 
the  enclosures  which  took  place  between  1470  and  1600 
A.D.,  and  from  his  investigations  it  seems  that  they  may  be 
divided  into  five  classes,  according  to  their  magnitude  in 
various  counties — (1)  A  very  large  portion  of  Suffolk, 
Essex,  and  Kent  was  enclosed  ;  almost  two-thirds  of  Hert- 
fordshire and  Worcestershire,  a  third  of  Warwick  (chiefly 
in  the  west  of  the  county),  and  almost  all  of  Durham, 
though  this  latter  was  enclosed  after  the  Restoration.  (2) 
The  counties  of  Northampton,  Shropshire,  the  southern 
half  of  Leicester,  East  Norfolk,  and  the  Isle  of  Wight  were 
enclosed  to  a  large  extent,  but  not  quite  so  much  as  those 
first  mentioned  ;  and  (3)  sporadic  or  scattered  enclosures 
were  made  in  the  rest  of  Norfolk,  the  south  of  Bedford- 
shire, and  north  of  Wiltshire.  (4)  The  remaining  counties 
were  hardly  disturbed  by  the  prevailing  desire,  i.e.,  the 
counties  of  Yorkshire,  Oxford,  Nottingham,  South  Wilt- 
shire, and  Buckingham.  There  remains  (5)  a  group  of 
counties  about  which  not  enough  information  is  available 
(Surrey,  Sussex,  Hants,  Dorset,  Somerset,  Stafford,  Cheshire, 
Lancashire,  Westmoreland,  and  Cumberland),  and  we  may 
therefore  conclude  that  enclosures  did  not  take  place  there 
to  any  great  extent.  It  will  be  seen  that  it  was  chiefly 
the  Eastern  and  South-eastern  counties  where  enclosures 
were  made  most  largely,  probably  because  they  offered  the 
greatest  facilities  for  sheep-rearing  and  more  careful  agricul- 
ture. The  progress  of  enclosures2  spreads  itself  over  four  cen- 
turies, and  vitally  changed  the  mediaeval  rural  economy  ;  but 
it  was  most  rapid  in  the  two  periods  from  1470  to  1530  A.D., 
and,much  later,from  1760  to  1830  A.D.  About  the  former  of 
these  two  periods  we  will  now  give  some  contemporary  evidence. 

§  131.  Evidence  of  the  ^Results  of  Enclosing. 
Such  evidence  is  found  both  in  popular  songs  and  par- 
liamentary  documents.      An   old   ballad   of   the   sixteenth 
century  complains  : 

1  Ashley,  Ectm.  Hist.,  II.  ii.  p.  286. 

J  Of.  Ashley,  Econ.  Hist.,  II.  ii.  pp.  285,  288. 


216  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

"  The  towns  go  down,  the  land  decays, 
Great  men  maketh  now-a-days 

A  sheep-cote  in  the  church  "  ; 1 

and  this  points  to  the  growth  of  sheep-farming,  to  which 
all  other  considerations  had  to  give  way.  It  led  also  to 
the  "  engrossing "  of  farms,  or  the  occupying  of  a  large 
number  of  farms  merely  for  the  purposes  of  pasture.  A 
petition  of  1536  complains  of  the  "great  and  covetous 
misusages  of  farms  within  the  realm,  which  misusages,"  it 
says,  "  hath  not  only  been  begun  by  divers  gentlemen,  but 
also  by  divers  and  many  merchant  adventurers,  cloth- 
makers,  goldsmiths,  butchers,  tanners,  and  other  artificers, 
and  unreasonable,  covetous  persons  which  doth  encroach 
daily  many  farms,  more  than  they  can  occupy,  in  tilth  of 
corn — ten,  twelve,  fourteen,  or  sixteen  farms  in  one  man's 
hands  at  once." z  It  goes  on  to  say  that  "  in  time  past 
there  hath  been  in  every  farm  a  good  house  kept,  and  in 
some  of  them  three,  four,  five,  or  six  ploughs  kept  and 
daily  occupied  to  the  great  comfort  and  relief  of  your 
subjects,  poor  and  rich.  But  now,  by  reason  of  so  many 
farms  engrossed  in  one  man's  hands,  which  cannot  till  them, 
the  ploughs  be  decayed,  and  the  farmhouses  and  other 
dwellings,  so  that  when  there  was  in  a  town  twenty  or 
thirty  dwelling-houses,  they  be  now  decayed,  ploughs  and 
all  the  people  clean  gone,  and  the  churches  down,  and  no 
more  parishioners  in  many  parishes,  but  a  neatherd  and  a 
shepherd,  instead  of  three  score  or  four  score  of  persons." 
The  same  complaint  is  made  by  Sir  Thomas  More,  who 
speaks  s  of  the  increase  of  pasture  as  "  peculiar  to  England," 
by  which  "  your  sheep  may  be  said  now  to  devour  men, 
and  to  unpeople  not  only  villages  but  towns."  Land-owners, 
and  "  even  those  holy  men  the  abbots,"  he  says,  "  stop  the 
course  of  agriculture,  destroying  houses  and  towns,  reserv- 
ing only  the  churches  and  enclosed  grounds,  that  they  may 
lodge  their  sheep  in  them."  The  result  was  a  terrible  in- 
crease of  pauperism,  for  men  "  would  willingly  work,  but 

1  Now-a-dayes,  a  ballad  (Ballad  Society)  lines  157-160. 

2  Rolls  House  MS.,  miscellaneous,  second  series,  854  (Froude). 

3  Utopia  (Morley's  edn.),  p.  64. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  217 

can  find  none  that  will  hire  them,  for  there  is  no  more 
occasion  for  country  labour,  to  which  they  have  been  bred, 
when  there  is  no  arable  ground  left." l  In  fact,  the  evils 
were  so  great  that  attempts  were  made  to  deal  with  them 
by  legislation  ;  *  but  they  were,  of  course  useless.  "  It 
remains  certain,"  says  Froude,  speaking  of  Edward  VI.'s 
reign,  "  that  the  absorption  of  the  small  farms,  the  en- 
closure system,  and  the  increase  of  grazing  farms,  had 
assumed  proportions  mischievous  and  dangerous.  Leases 
as  they  fell  in  could  not  obtain  renewal ;  the  copyholder, 
whose  farm  had  been  held  by  his  forefathers  so  long  that 
custom  seemed  to  have  made  it  his  own,  found  his  fines  or 
his  rent  quadrupled,  or  himself  without  alternative  ex- 
pelled. The  Act  against  the  pulling  down  of  farmhouses 
had  been  evaded  by  the  repair  of  a  room  which  might  be 
occupied  by  a  shepherd,  or  a  single  furrow  would  be  driven 
across  a  meadow  of  a  hundred  acres,  to  prove  that  it  was 
still  under  the  plough.  The  great  cattle-owners,  in  order 
to  escape  the  sheep  statutes,  held  their  stock  in  the  names 
of  their  sons  or  servants  ;  the  highways  and  villages  were 
covered  in  consequence  with  forlorn  and  outcast  families, 
now  reduced  to  beggary,  who  had  been  the  occupiers  of  com- 
fortable holdings ;  and  thousands  of  dispossessed  tenants 
made  their  way  to  London,  clamouring  in  the  midst  of  their 
starving  children  at  the  doors  of  the  courts  of  law  for  redress 
which  they  could  not  obtain."3  A  commission  was  ap- 
pointed in  1548  to  enquire  into  this  distressing  state  of 
things,  and  it  resulted  in  a  petition  which  shows  a  gloomy 
picture  of  rural  England.  "  The  population  was  diminished, 
the  farmer  and  labourer  were  impoverished,  villages  were 

1  Utopia,  p.  66.     The  preamble  to  the  25  Henry  VIIL,  c.  13,  recites  all 
the  evils  here  mentioned. 

2  Of.  Act  1  Henry  VIIL,  c.  1,  for  reconfltrnction  of  farm-buildings,  and 
27  Henry  VIII.,  c.  22,  on  same  subject ;  also  25  Henry  VIIL,  c.  13,  that  no 
one  shall  keep  more  than  2000  sheep,  or  occupy  more  than  two  farms. 

3  Froude,  History,  iv.  p.  353,  who  quotes  as  authorities  Becon's  Jewel  of 
Joy  ;  Discourse  of  Bernard  Gilpin  in  Strype's  Memorials  ;  Instructions  to 
the  Commissioners  of  Enclosures,  Ibid  ;  Address  of  Mr  Hales,  Ibid  ;  and  a 
Draft  of  an  Act  of  Parliament  presented  to  the  House  of  Commons  in  1548, 
MS.  Domestic,  Edward  VI.  State  Paper  Office ;  also  Lever's  Sermons  in 
Strype's  Memorial*. 


2i 8  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

destroyed,  the  towns  decayed,  and  the  industrious  classes 
throughout  England  in  a  condition  of  unexampled  suffering." 
The  fault  lay  in  the  upper  classes,  "  the  nobles,  knights,  and 
gentlemen,"  who  by  no  means  fulfilled  their  duties  as 
"shepherds  to  the  people,  surveyors  and  overseers  to  the 
king's  subjects,"  although,  as  the  petition  justly  remarks, 
their  position  "had  given  them  sufficient  provision  that 
without  bodily  labour  they  might  attend  thereto."  1  Greed 
and  poverty  walked  side  by  side,  and  while  wealth  was 
increasing  with  the  few,  the  many  were  suffering  terribly 
from  the  general  change  that  was  passing  over  both  agri- 
culture and  society  at  large. 

§  132.  Other  Economic  Changes.      The  Finances. 

In  fact,  it  becomes  evident  that  the  old  mediaeval  system 
of  industry  was  breaking  up  in  England.  The  new  life 
created  by  the  Renaissance  was  causing  a  keener  and  more 
eager  spirit  among  all  classes  of  men.  Competition  began 
to  operate  as  a  new  force,  and  men  made  haste  to  grow 
rich.2  The  merchants  were  becoming  bolder  and  more 
enterprising  in  their  ventures.3  The  discoveries  of  America 
by  Columbus  (1492)  and  by  Cabot  (1497),  and  of  the  sea- 
route  to  India  by  Vasco  di  Gama  (1498),  had  kindled  a 
desire  to  share  largely  in  the  wealth  of  these  newly  accessible 
countries.  At  home  the  lords  of  the  manors  no  longer 
remained  in  close  personal  relationships  with  their  tenants, 
but  regarded  their  estates  merely  as  commercial  speculations 
from  which  it  was  their  business  only  to  draw  as  much  profit 
as  possible.4  The  tenants  were  certainly  no  longer  villeins, 
but  were  nominally  independent  and  had  certain  rights. 
But  the  lords  of  the  manors  had  small  respect  for  rights  that 
were  only  guarded  by  custom ;  and  evicted  or  stole  land 
from  their  tenants  to  such  an  extent  that  multitudes  of 
dispossessed  and  impoverished  villagers  flocked  to  the  towns. 

1  MS.   Domestic,   Edward  VI.,   vol.   5,   State  Paper    Office;    (Froude, 
History,  iv.  p.  367). 

2  Cf.  Froude,  History,  iv.  510,  who  shows  how  the  haste  for  riches  caused 
fraud  in  the  woollen  cloth  trade. 

3  See  next  chapter.  <  Froude,  History,  vi.  109,  110. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  219 

"  The  poor  are  robbed  on  every  side,"  said  a  preacher l  of 
the  day  before  the  court,  "  and  that  of  such  as  have 
authority;  the  robberies,  extortions,  and  open  oppressions 
of  those  covetous  cormorants,  the  gentlemen,  have  no  end 
nor  limits  nor  banks  to  keep  in  their  vileness.  For  turning 
poor  men  out  of  their  holdings  they  take  it  for  no  offence, 
but  say  the  land  is  their  own,  and  turn  them  out  of  their 
shrouds  like  mice." 

Many  small  tenants  and  labourers,  too,  could  be  found 
wandering  from  place  to  place,  begging  or  robbing.2 
"  Thousands  in  England,"  says  the  same  preacher,  "  through 
such  [i.e.  the  landlords]  beg  now  from  door  to  door  who 
have  kept  honest  houses." 3  The  old  steady  village  life, 
with  its  isolation  and  strong  home  ties,  was  undergoing  a 
violent  transition.  Constant  work  and  regular  wages  were 
becoming  things  of  the  past.  The  labourer's  wages  would 
not  purchase  the  former  quantity  of  provisions  under  the 
new  high  prices  caused  by  the  debasement  of  the  currency 
and  by  the  discoveries  of  silver  from  1540  to  1600  ;4  for 
wages,  though  they  ultimately  follow  prices,  do  so  very 
slowly,  and  not  always  even  then  proportionately. 

At  the  same  time  the  nation  was  almost  in  the  throes  of 
bankruptcy.  Edward  VI.'s  ministers  were  in  a  chronic 
condition  of  financial  exhaustion.  Money  was  constantly 
being  raised  by  loans,  by  confiscations,  and  by  subsidies, 
but  the  universal  peculation  of  everyone  connected  with  the 
court  made  it  disappear  like  flowing  water.5  The  expenses 
of  the  king's  household  were  in  1549  more  than  one 
hundred  thousand  pounds,6  then  an  enormous  sum,  and 
more  than  five  times  those  of  Henry  VII.  The  labourers 
and  artificers  of  all  kinds  employed  by  the  Government 
called  in  vain  for  their  wages,7  while  the  daily  supplies  for 

1  Bernard  Gilpin,  quoted  in  Froude,  History,  iv.  369. 

3  Hence  the  very  severe  Act  1  Edward  VI.  c.  3,  reducing  '  loiterers '  and 
vagrants  to  slavery  ;  but  it  was  repealed  BOOH  as  being  too  harsh,  and  the 
Act  of  1536  was  revived  by  the  3  and  4  Edward  VI.  c.  16. 

8  Ut  supra. 

4  Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  343-345,  but  also  Cunningham  Enijlish 
Industry,  i.  pp.  483-487  ;  also  Anderson,  Commerce,  ii.  166. 

8  Froude,  History,  iv.  397.  '  /*• 

7/6.,p.  398. 


220  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  common  necessities  of  the  Government  itself  were  pro- 
vided by  loans  at  13  per  cent,  from  Antwerp  Jews,  the 
heavy  interest  on  which  was  paid  in  the  proceeds  of  the  sale 
of  bells  and  lead  robbed  from  the  churches  and  chantries.1 
"Never  before,  and  never  since,  has  an  English  Government 
been  reduced  to  shifts  so  scandalous."  Queen  Mary,  when 
she  first  came  to  the  throne  attempted  to  economise,2 
but  afterwards  her  strong  religious  convictions  induced 
her  to  strip  the  already  embarrassed  treasury  of  half  its 
remaining  revenues  in  order  to  re-establish  a  Roman  priest- 
hood,3 while  her  misplaced  affection  for  her  Spanish  hus- 
band made  her  force  the  nation  into  an  unnecessary  and 
expensive  war,  besides  wasting  enormous  gifts  of  money 
upon  Philip  himself.4  When  Elizabeth  came  to  the  throne 
she  succeeded  to  what  was  practically  a  bankrupt  inherit- 
ance.5 Yet  with  all  this  there  was  wealth  in  the  country, 
and  when  we  come  to  speak  of  Elizabethan  England,  we 
shall  find  that,  after  all,  the  nation  itself  was  not  quite  so 
poor  as  the  Governments  which  bad  done  their  best  to 
ruin  it. 

§  133.  Summary  of  the  Changes  of  the  Sixteenth  Century. 

Such  were  the  circumstances  which  accompanied  and 
produced  so  great  an  economic  transition  in  this  period. 
They  resulted  in  the  pauperization  of  a  large  portion  of  the 
working  classes,  and  in  the  impoverishment  of  the  small 
farmers.  On  the  other  hand,  the  new  nobles  and  land- 
owners gained  considerable  wealth.6  The  merchants  also 
were  exceedingly  flourishing,7  and  foreign  trade  was  grow- 
ing. In  summing  up,  then,  we  may  say  that  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  monasteries  and  the  creation  of  a  new  nobility 
from  the  adventurers  of  Henry  VIII. 's  court,  who  obtained 
most  of  the  monastic  wealth ;  the  debasement  of  the  coinage 

1  Froude,  Hist.,  iv.  pp.  399,  400. 

2  Ib.  vi.  p.  108.      3  Ib.      *  Ib.,  pp.  80,  82,  109  note.      5  See  below,  p.  234. 
0  A  correspondent  of  Sir  William  Cecil,  speaking  of  their  wealth,  calls 

them  "  the  meaner  sort."    The  Distresses  of  the  Commonwealth,  addressed  to 
the  Lords  of  the  Council,  December  1558.     Domestic  MSS.,  Elizabeth,  vol. 
i.  (Froude,  vi.  110),  cf.  also  Froude,  History,  vi.  78. 
7  Above,  p.  212,  note  2. 


THE  REIGN  OF  HENRY  VIII  221 

and  the  exaltation  in  prices  aided  largely  (1540 — 1600) 
by  the  discovery  of  new  silver  mines  in  South  America ; l 
the  rise  in  the  price  of  wool  both  for  export  and  home 
manufacture,  coupled  with  the  consequent  increase  in  sheep 
farming,2  and  the  practice  of  enclosure  of  land — all  produced 
most  important  economic  changes  in  the  history  of  English 
labour  and  industry.  To  these  we  must  add,  towards  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  the  great  immigration  of 
Flemings,  chiefly  after  1567,  owing  to  the  continual  perse- 
cutions of  Alva  and  other  Spanish  rulers.3  This  gave  a 
great  impetus  to  English  manufactures,  its  effects,  however, 
being  chiefly  felt  in  the  seventeenth  century,  when  another 
immigration  took  place.4  Finally,  in  the  sixteenth  century 
were  laid  the  foundations  of  our  present  commercial  enter- 
prise and  maritime  trade,  by  the  voyages  of  Drake  and 
other  great  sea-captains  of  Elizabeth's  time.6  Their  expe- 
ditions, it  is  true,  were  mainly  buccaneering  exploits,  but 
they  created  a  spirit  of  maritime  enterprise  that  bore  good 
fruit  in  the  following  reigns.  Nor  indeed  was  trade  even  in 
the  previous  centuries  entirely  insignificant,  but  had  con- 
siderably developed,  as  the  next  chapter  will  show.  But 
meanwhile  the  state  of  society  in  England  gave  grave  cause 
for  uneasiness  to  the  thinkers  and  serious  statesmen  of  the 
day.  "  They  beheld  the  organisation  of  centuries  collapse, 
the  tillers  of  the  earth  adrift  without  employment,  villages 
and  towns  running  to  waste,  landlords  careless  of  all  but 
themselves,  turning  their  tenants  out  upon  the  world  when 
there  were  no  colonies  to  fly  to,  no  expanding  manufactures  8 
offering  other  openings  to  labour.  A  change  in  the  relations 
between  the  peasantry  and  the  owners  of  the  soil,  which 

1  Anderaon,  Commerce,  ii.  166  ;  Seebohm,  Era  of  Protestant  Reformation, 
p.  228. 

a  Seebohra,  p.  49  ;  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  718. 

8  The  edict  which  bore  in  time  "  its  fatal  fruit  ?n  the  Alva  persecutions," 
was  issued  by  the  Emperor  on  April  29th,  1550;  and  almost  immediately 
Flemings  began  to  emigrate  to  England.  Froude,  History,  iv.  pp. 
533-536. 

4  See  below,  p.  241.  '  See  below,  p.  231. 

8  Froude  is  referring  to  the  enormous  manufacturing  industry  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  beside  which,  of  course,  the  growing  manufactures  of 
the  sixteenth  sink  into  insignificance. 


222  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

three  hundred  years  have  but  just  effected,  with  the  assist- 
ance of  an  unlimited  field  for  emigration,  was  attempted 
harshly  and  unmercifully,  with  no  such  assistance,  in  a  single 
generation.  Luxury  increased  on  one  side,  with  squalor 
and  wretchedness  on  the  other  as  its  hideous  shadow.  The 
value  of  the  produce  of  the  land  was  greater  than  before, 
but  it  was  no  longer  distributed." ]  In  fact,  with  the 
growth  of  modern  influences  in  thought,  religion,  industry, 
and  trade,  there  came  those  modern  evils  which  seem  to  be 
their  inevitable  accompaniment ;  and  we  feel  that  in  very 
truth,  both  for  good  and  ill,  the  genius  of  the  sixteenth 
century  was  more  akin  to  that  of  the  nineteenth  than  to 
that  of  any  previous  age. 

1  Froude,  History,  iv.  360. 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE    GROWTH    OF    FOREIGN    TRADE 

§  134.   The  Expansion  of  Commerce.      The  New  Spirit. 

JUST  as  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century  marks 
what  may  be  called  an  economic  revolution  in  the  home 
industries  of  the  county,  so  too  it  marks  the  beginning  of 
international  commerce  upon  the  modern  scale.  The 
economic  revolution,  of  which  the  new  agricultural  system 
and  the  practice  of  enclosures  were  the  most  striking  features, 
was  a  change  from  the  old  dependent,  uncompetitive,  and 
regulated  industrial  system,  to  one  under  which  Capital 
and  Labour  grew  up  as  separate  forces  in  the  form  in  which 
we  recognise  them  now.  Labour  had  become  virtually 
independent1  since  the  Peasants'  Revolt  of  1381,  and  at 
the  same  time  it  felt  consciously  that  it  was  in  opposition 
to  capitalist  and  land-owning  interests.  In  its  desire  for 
freedom  it  had  also  begun  to  shake  off  even  its  self-imposed 
restrictions,  and  the  power  of  the  gilds  had  rapidly  waned.2 
A  new  and  eager  spirit  came  with  the  Renaissance  and  the 
Reformation,  a  spirit  which  on  the  economic  side  showed 
itself  in  the  development  of  competition,  the  shaking  off  of 
old  restraints,  and  in  more  daring  and  far-seeing  enterprises. 
Especially  was  this  the  case  among  the  merchants,  fired  as 
they  were  by  the  great  discoveries  of  the  latter  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century,8  and  hence  we  notice,  throughout  the 
sixteenth  century  and  especially  at  its  close,  that  our  foreign 
trade  becomes  more  extensive  than  it  had  ever  been  before, 
and  the  foundations  of  our  present  international  commerce 
were  securely  laid. 

I  Cf.  Seebohm,  Era  of  the  Protestant  Reformation,  p.  49. 

II  Above,  pp.  189,  208,  209. 

*  Seebohm,  Era  of  the  Proteatant  Reformation,  p.  6. 


224  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§  135.   Foreign  Trade  in  the  Fifteenth  Century. 

At  this  point  we  must  look  back  for  a  moment  at  our 
foreign  trade  before  this  new  epoch.  Although  our  enter- 
prises were  by  no  means  large,  there  was  yet  a  fairly  con- 
siderable trade  done  in  the  fifteenth  century  with  the 
countries  in  the  west  of  Europe,  i.e.  France,  Spain,  Por- 
tugal, and  the  Baltic  lands,  and  especially  with  the  Low 
Countries.1  As  England  was  then  almost  entirely  an  agri- 
cultural country,2  our  chief  export  was  wool  for  the  Flemish 
looms  to  work  up ; 3  but  the  corn  laws  show  that  there  was 
also  other  agricultural  produce  exported ; 4  and  likewise 
some  mineral  products.  In  fact  England  supplied  nearly 
all  Western  Europe  with  two  most  important  metals,  tin  5 
and  lead ;  the  former  coming  chiefly  from  Cornwall  and  the 
latter  from  Derbyshire,6  though  in  neither  case  exclusively 
from  those  counties.  Bodmin  was  the  chief  seat  of  the  tin 
trade.  Our  huge  mineral  wealth  in  coal  and  iron  was 
hardly  yet  touched,  even  for  home  use,  and  hardly  any  was 
exported.7  Our  imports  were  numerous  and  varied,  their 
number  being  balanced  by  the  greater  bulk  and  value  of 
our  exports  of  wool  and  lead. 

A  fair  amount  of  trade  was  done  with  Portugal  and 
Spain,  which  sent  us  iron  and  war-horses  ; 8  Gascony  and 
other  parts  of  France  sent  their  wines  ;  9  rich  velvets,  linens, 
and  fine  cloths  were  imported  from  Ghent,  Liege,  Bruges, 
and  other  Flemish  manufacturing  towns.10  The  ships  of 

1  See  the  preamble  to  the  12  Henry  VII.,  c.  6  (A.D.  1497),  which  mentions 
the  trade  to  all  these  countries. 

2  Seebohm,  Era  of  Protestant  Reformation,  p.  229. 

3  For  its  importance,  cf.  p.  122,  and  Bacon's  History  of  Henry  VII. 
there  referred  to. 

4  Above,  p.  185. 

6  The.  Libelle  of  English  Policie,  about  1436  (fifteenth  century),  mentions 
"  cloth,  wolle,  and  tynne  "  as  exports. 

8  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  151 ;  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  599. 

1  Coal  was,  however,  used  to  a  small  extent,  and  brought  by  sea  to 
London ;  cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  147  ;  it  also  seems  in  the  sixteenth 
century  to  have  been  exported ;  cf.  Froude,  History,  iv.  522,  in  a  quotation 
from  a  letter  of  Wm.  Lane,  merchant,  of  London,  to  Sir  William  Cecil, 
M8.  Domestic,  Edward  VI. ,  Vol.  xiii. 

8  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  142,  144. 

9  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  151,  and  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  142-144.  w  76. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  FOREIGN  TRADE     225 

the  Hansa  merchants  brought  herrings,  wax,  timber,  fur, 
and  amber  from  the  Baltic  countries  ;  and  Genoese  traders 
came  with  the  silks  and  velvets  and  glass  of  Italy.1  All 
these  met  one  another,  as  we  saw  before,  in  the  great  fairs, 
as  at  Stourbridge,  or  in  London,  the  great  trading  centre  of 
England  and  afterwards  of  the  Western  world. 

§  136.  The  Venetian  Fleet. 

But  our  most  important  trade  in  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries  centred  round  the  annual  visit  of  the 
Venetian  fleet  to  the  southern  shores  of  England.  This 
was  a  great  company  of  trading  vessels,  which  left  Venice 
every  year  upon  a  visit  to  England  and  Flanders.2  Our 
English  vessels  did  not  at  this  time  often  venture  into  the 
Mediterranean,  and  so  all  the  stores  of  the  Southern  Euro- 
pean countries,  and  more  especially  the  treasures  of  the 
East,  came  to  us  through  the  agency  of  Venice.8  Laden 
with  silks,  satins,  fine  damasks,  cottons,  and  other  then 
costly  garments,  together  with  rare  Eastern  spices, 
precious  stones,  and  sweet  wines,4  this  fleet  sailed  slowly 
along  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  trading  at  the  ports 
of  Italy,  South  France,  and  Spain,  till  it  passed  through 
the  Straits  of  Gibraltar,  and  at  length  came  up  the  Channel 
and  reached  our  southern  ports.  When  it  had  reached  the 
Downs,  the  fleet  broke  up  for  a  time,  some  vessels  putting 
in  at  Sandwich,  Rye,  and  other  towns,  and  a  large  number 
stopping  at  Southampton,  while  others  went  on  to  Flanders.6 
Several  days,  sometimes  weeks,  were  spent  in  exchanging 
their  valuable  cargoes  for  English  goods,  chiefly  wool,  the 
balance  being  paid  over  in  gold  ;  and  then  the  various 
portions  of  the  great  fleet  would  re-unite  again  and  set  sail 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  151 ;  and  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  142-144. 

2  Hence  the  Venetians  themselves  called  it  the  "  Flanders  Fleet,"  and  it 
first  sailed  in  1317  ;  cf.  Cunningham,  i.  381,  note. 

3  Cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  165. 
*  Cf.  Libelle  of  English  Policie:— 

"  The  great  galleys  of  Venice  and  Florence 
Be  well  laden  with  things  of  complacence, 
All  spicery  and  of  grocers'  ware 
With  sweet  wines,  all  manner  of  chaffer,  ..."  Ac. 
8  Cunningham,  English  Iiuluslry,  i.  381. 

P 


226  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

for  Venice,  from  which  city  they  were  often  absent  for  nearly 
a  twelvemonth.1  This  annual  visit  was  very  convenient  for 
English  traders,  before  our  own  merchants  ventured  far 
away  from  our  coasts.  But  it  is  a  sign  of  the  increased 
commercial  enterprise  of  England  in  the  sixteenth  century 
that  the  visit  then  became  unprofitable,  and  the  last  time2 
the  Venetian  fleet  came  to  our  shores  was  in  1587. 

Besides  this  annual  visit  of  the  Fleet,  there  was  also 
a  large  number  of  Italian  merchants  residing  permanently 
in  London,  and  engaged  apparently  in  internal  as  well 
as  foreign  trade.  They  are  mentioned  in  an  Act3  of 
1484,  which  enumerates  Venetians,  Genoese,  Florentines, 
Apulians,  Sicilians,  and  natives  of  Lucca,  complains  of 
their  competition  with  native  English  merchants,  and  seeks 
to  impose  upon  them  various  restrictions.  The  Florentines 
in  London  were  engaged  in  banking,  and  had  carried  on 
this  business  since  the  days  of  Edward  III.,  if  not  be- 
fore ;  *  the  Genoese  were  skilled  in  the  manufacture  of 
weapons  of  war,  and  also  imported  materials,  such  as  woad 
and  alum,  that  were  used  in  the  English  cloth  manufac- 
tures ; 6  while  the  Venetians  were,  as  we  saw,  engaged 
chiefly  in  the  importation  of  foreign  cloths  and  spices. 
But  in  course  of  time  these  foreign  merchants  found  that 
Englishmen  were  beginning  to  engage  in  their  own  trade 
themselves,  and  even,  as  this  trade  increased,  made  voyages 
to  Italy,  or  actually  settled  in  Italian  towns.  They  had 
begun  to  do  so  in  the  fifteenth  century,6  and  had  a  consul 
of  their  own  at  Pisa,  the  chief  port  for  English  wool ; 7  and 
early  in  the  sixteenth  century  we  find  English  merchants 
visiting  the  Greek  islands8  and  the  Levant.9  Thus  the 
monopoly  of  the  Italian  visitors  to  England  was  gradually 
broken  through,  and  English  merchants  took  part  in  the 
active  traffic  of  the  Mediterranean  ports. 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  101. 

a  The  Fleet  was  in  that  year  wrecked  off  the  Isle  of  Wight ;  Sir  W. 
Monson  (who  was  an  eyewitness),  Naval  Tracts,  iv. 

3  The  1  Richard  III.,  c.  9 ;  cf.  also  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  185. 

4  Cf.  Cunningham,  English  Industry,  i.  379. 

J&M  i-  380.  6  76.,  i.  378. 

7  Rymer,  Foedera,  xii.  390 ;  and  cf.  Cunningham,  i.  438. 

8  Rymer,  Foedera,  xiii.  353 ;  xiv.  424.  9  Ib.,  xiv.  389. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  FOREIGN  TRADE     227 

§  137.  The  Hanseatic  League's  Station  in  London. 

While  our  commerce  was,  however,  not  yet  so  greatly  de- 
veloped, there  existed  in  England  another  important  institu- 
tion carried  on  by  foreign  merchants,  this  time  from  Germany. 
The  Hansa,  or  Hanseatic  League,  originated  in  very  early 
times  among  some  of  the  leading  trading  towns  of  Germany,1 
such  as  Hamburg  and  Liibeck  ;  and  after  a  time  these  towns 
formed  themselves  into  a  League  for  mutual  protection 
amid  the  constant  wars  and  piracy  of  those  early  days,  and 
became  a  sort  of  federal  union.2  In  the  fifteenth  century 
the  League  had  grown  so  large  and  powerful  that  seventy 
cities  belonged  to  it,  and  it  had  branches  or  depots  in  every 
important  town  of  Northern  Europe.8  Of  course  there 
was  a  large  branch  at  London,  in  the  "  Steelyard,"  on 
which  spot  the  Cannon  Street  Station  now  stands.4  This 
branch  had  existed  from  very  early  times,  and  a  warehouse 
was  there  in  which  the  German  merchants  stored  their 
goods.  In  Richard  II. 's  time  this  building  was  enlarged, 
and  so  it  was  again  in  the  reign  of  Edward  IV.  Round  it 
dwelt  the  foreign  merchants,  who  formed  quite  a  little 
colony  in  the  very  heart  of  mediaeval  London.  Here  they 
held  a  kind  of  chamber  of  commerce,  presided  over  by  an 
alderman,  with  two  co-assessors  and  nine  council-men,  and 
meeting  regularly  on  Wednesday  mornings  in  every  week.6 
The  Steelyard  colony  existed  for  some  hundreds  of  years, 
and  taught  many  valuable  lessons  in  commerce  to  our 
English  merchants.  It  provided  for  us  a  regular  supply  of 
the  produce  of  Russia,  Germany,  and  Norway,  especially 
timber  and  naval  stores,  and  also  corn  when  our  English 
harvest  fell  short.6  But  as  our  own  merchants  grew  more 

1  The  "men  of  the  Emperor"  are  mentioned  in  King  Ethelred's  laws 
-  (De  Instilulis  Londinie,  Thorpe,  i.  300)  as  living  in  London,  but  this  was 
probably  before  the  Hansa  was  formed. 

8  The  chief  authority  for  the  history  of  the  Hansa  in  England  is  Lappen- 
berg's  Urkundliche  Oeschichte  dea  Hanfischen  Stahlhojes  zu  London  (Ham- 
burg, 1851),  but  a  good  popular  history  now  exists  in  English  in  H. 
Zimmern's  Hansa  Towns. 

8  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  180. 

4  Zimmern,  Hansa  Towns,  p.  187. 

6  Werdenhagen,  quoted  in  Bourne's  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  99. 
'*  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  235. 


228  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

prosperous,  and  their  commerce  extended,  they  became 
jealous  of  the  German  colony.  Attacks  were  made  upon 
it  by  London  mobs,1  and  Edward  VI.  actually  (in  1551) 
rescinded  its  charter.2  That  was  the  beginning  of  the 
end.  Mary  restored  it  for  a  time,3  but  towards  the  close  of 
Elizabeth's  reign  (1597)  it  was  finally  abolished.4  This,  too, 
was  another  sign  of  the  growth  of  our  own  foreign  trade. 

§  138.   Trade  with  Flanders.     Antwerp  in  the  Fifteenth 
and  Sixteenth  Centuries. 

We  have  mentioned  before  how  the  eastern  ports  and 
harbours  of  England  used  to  swarm  with  small,  light  craft 
that  plied  all  the  summer  through  between  our  own  country 
and  Flanders.  We  have  seen,  too,  that  this  continuous 
trade  was  due  to  the  fact  that  we  supplied  the  Flemish 
looms  with  wool.  Up  to  the  fifteenth  century  the  chief, 
but  by  no  means  the  only,  Flemish  emporium  to  which 
our  English  ships  plied,  was  Bruges,5  but  in  the  six- 
teenth century  this  town  quite  lost  its  former  glory, 
and  Antwerp6  took  its  place.  The  change  was  partly 
due  to  the  action  of  Maximilian,  the  Emperor,  to 
whom  Henry  VIII.  was  afterwards  allied,  and  who,  in 
revenge  for  a  rebellion  in  which  Ghent  and  Bruges  took 
part,  caused  the  canal  which  connected  Bruges  with  the  sea  to 
be  blocked  up  at  Sluys7  (1482),  and  thus  English  and  other 
ships  were  compelled  to  direct  their  course  to  Antwerp, 
which  was  rapidly  becoming  a  great  and  flourishing  port. 
Antwerp  remained  without  a  rival  till  near  the  close  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  every  nation  had  its  representatives 
there.8  Our  own  consul,  to  use  a  modern  term,  was,  at  the 

1  Craik,  British,  Commerce,  i.  233. 

a  Ib.,  i.  233-235.  »  Ib.,  i.  234. 

4  Anderson,  Chron.  Deduct.  Commerce,  ii.  145. 

5  The  English  merchants  at  Bruges  were  organised  into  a  kind  of  gild  or 
company,  and  allowed  to  elect  a  mayor  of  their  own,  Sot.  Stap.,  27-46 
Edward  HI.,  m.  11,  Tower  Records,  Record  Office.     This  was  in  1359. 
See    Appendix  C.    to    Cunningham,    English    Industry    and    Commerce, 
vol.  i. 

6  The  "  mansion  "  of  the  English  merchants  at  Antwerp  is  mentioned  by 
Bacon,  Life  of  Henry  VII.  (p.  147,  ed.  Lumby). 

7  Anderson,  Chron.  Deduct,  of  Commerce,  i.  511,  520. 

Ib.,  p.  521.     It  also  derived  much  importance  from  the  trade  carried 


THE  GROWTH  OF  FOREIGN  TRADE     229 

close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  Sir  Richard  Gresham;  and 
later,  iu  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  his  celebrated  son,  the 
financier  and  economist,  Sir  Thomas  Gresham.1  The  fact  of 
our  having  these  representatives  there  is  again  a  proof  of 
the  growth  of  trade  in  the  sixteenth  century.  An  Italian 
author,  Ludovico  Guicciardini  (who  died  in  1589),  gives  in 
his  Description  of  the  Netherlands  a  very  precise  account 
of  our  own  commerce  with  Antwerp  at  this  period,  and  it 
is  interesting  to  note  how  varied  our  commerce  had  by  this 
time  become.  This  is  what  he  says  as  to  our  imports : 
"  To  England  Antwerp  sends  jewels,  precious  stones,  silver 
bullion,  quicksilver,  wrought  silks,  gold  and  silver  cloth  and 
thread,  camlets,  grograms,  spices,  drugs,  sugar,  cotton, 
cummin,  linens,  fine  and  coarse  serges,  tapestry,  madder, 
hops  in  great  quantities,  glass,  salt-fish,  metallic  and  other 
merceries  of  all  sorts ;  arms  of  all  kinds,  ammunition  for 
war,  and  household  furniture."  2  As  to  our  exports,  he  tells 
us :  "  From  England  Antwerp  receives  vast  quantities  of 
coarse  and  fine  draperies,  fringes  and  all  other  things  of 
that  kind  to  a  great  value ;  the  finest  wool ;  excellent 
saffron,  but  in  small  quantities  ;  a  great  quantity  of  lead 
and  tin ;  sheep  and  rabbit  skins  without  number,  and 
various  other  sorts  of  the  fine  peltry  (i.e.  skins)  and  leather  ; 
beer,  cheese,  and  other  provisions  in  great  quantities ;  also 
Malmsey  wines,  which  the  English  import  from  Candia. 
It  is  marvellous  to  think  of  the  vast  quantity  of  drapery 
sent  by  the  English  into  the  Netherlands."  8 

This  list  is  sufficient  to  show  an  extensive  trade,  and  we 
shall  comment  upon  one  or  two  items  of  it  in  the  next 
chapter.  Here  we  need  only  remark  upon  the  great 
growth  of  English  manufactures  of  cloth,  and  on  the 
fact  that  English  merchants  now  evidently  traded  in 
the  Levant. 

on  by  the  Portuguese  after  the  discovery  of  the  sea  route  to  India.  Cj. 
Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  215. 

1  The  lives  of  Richard  Gresham  (1485?- 1549)  and  of  Thomas  Greaham 
(1619?-1579)  are  well  given  by  Charles  Welch  in  the  new  Dictionary  oj 
National  Biography. 

a  Extract  in  Macpherson's  Annals  of  Commerce,  ii.  131. 

»  /6.,  ii.  131. 


230  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§  139.  The  Decay   of  Antwerp  and  Rise  of  London  as 
the    Western  Emporium. 

But  the  prosperity  of  Antwerp  did  not  last  quite  a  cen- 
tury. Like  all  Flemish  towns,  it  suffered  severely  under 
the  Spanish  invasion  and  the  persecutions  of  the  notorious 
Alva.  In  1567  it  was  ruinously  sacked,  and  its  commerce 
was  forced  into  new  channels,  and  the  disaster  was  com- 
pleted by  the  sacking  of  the  town1  again  in  1585. 
Antwerp's  ruin  was  London's  gain.  Even  in  1567,  at  the 
time  of  the  first  sacking,  and  earlier  still,2  many  Protestant 
Flemish  merchants  and  manufacturers  fled  to  England,3 
where,  as  Sir  Thomas  Gresham  promised  them,  they  found 
peace  and  welcome,  and  in  their  turn  gave  a  great  impulse 
to  English  commercial  prosperity.  Throughout  Elizabeth's 
reign,  in  fact,  there  was  a  continual  influx  of  Protestant 
refugees  to  our  shores,  and  Elizabeth  and  her  statesman  had 
the  sagacity  to  encourage  these  industrious  and  wealthy 
immigrants.4  Besides  aiding  our  manufactures,  as  we  shall 
see  later,  they  aided  our  commerce.  In  1588  there  were 
38  Flemish  merchants  established  in  London,  who  sub- 
scribed £5000  towards  the  defence  of  England  against  the 
Spanish  Armada.5  The  greatness  of  Antwerp  was  trans- 
ferred to  London,  and  although  Amsterdam6  also  gained 
additional  importance  in  Holland,  London  now  took  the 
foremost  position  as  the  general  mart  of  Europe,  where  the 
new  treasures  of  the  two  Americas  were  found  side  by  side 
with  the  products  of  Europe  and  the  East. 

1  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  260 ;  Anderson,  Commerce,  ii.  125,  159. 

2  In  1560  Philip's  envoy  reported  to  his  master  that  "  ten  thousand  of 
your  Majesty's  servants  in  the  Low  Countries  are  already  in  England  with 
their  preachers  and  ministers."     Green,  History,  ii.  389.     Cf.  also  Froude, 
History,  iv.  535. 

3  Anderson,  Chron.  Deduct,  of  Commerce,  ii.  159   says,  "About  a  third 
part  of  the  manufacturers  and  merchants  who  wrought  and  dealt  in  silks, 
damasks,  taffeties,  bayes,  sayes,  serges,  and  stockings,  settled  in  England, 
because  England  was  then  ignorant  of  those  manufactures." 

4  Letters  patent  were  granted  on  5th  November  1565,  permitting  the 
"strangers"  settled  at  Norwich  to  manufacture  "such  outlandish  com- 
modities  as   hath  not  been  used  to  be  made  within  this  our  realm  of 
England."    Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  67. 

6  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  115.        6  Anderson,  Commerce,  ii.  159. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  FOREIGN  TRADE     231 

§  140.  The  Merchants  and  Sea-Captains  of  the  Elizabethan 
Age  m  the  New  World. 

It  is  thus  of  interest  to  note  how  the  great  Reformation 
conflict  between  Roman  Catholic  and  Protestant  in  Europe 
resulted  in  the  commercial  greatness  of  England.  Inter- 
esting, also,  is  the  story  of  the  expansion  of  commerce  in 
the  New  World,  owing  to  the  attacks  of  the  great  sea  cap- 
tains of  those  days — Drake,  Frobisher,  and  Raleigh — as  well 
as  of  numberless  privateers,  upon  the  huge  Catholic  power 
of  Spain.1  These  attacks  were  perhaps  not  much  more  than 
buccaneering  exploits,  but  the  leaders  of  them  firmly  be- 
lieved that  they  were  doing  a  good  service  to  the  cause  of 
Protestantism,  and  freedom  by  wounding  Spain  wherever 
they  could.  And  possibly  they  were  right.  Their  won- 
drous voyages  stimulated  others,  likewise,  to  set  out  on  far 
and  venturesome  expeditions.2  Men  dreamt  of  a  northern 
passage  to  India,  and  although  Hugh  Willoughby's  expedition 
failed,  one  of  his  ships  under  Richard  Chancellor  reached 
Archangel,3  and  thus  opened  up  a  direct  trade  with  Russia ; 
so  that  in  1554  a  company  was  formed  specially  for  this 
trade.4  Sir  John  Hawkins  voyaged  to  Guinea  and  Brazil, 
and  engaged  in  the  slave-trade  between  Africa  and  the  new 
fields  of  labour  in  America.5  It  was,  too,  in  Elizabeth's 
reign  that  the  merchants  of  Southampton8  entered  upon 
the  trade  with  the  coast  of  Guinea,  and  gained  much  wealth 
from  its  gold  dust  and  ivory.  Bristol  fishermen  sailed  across 
the  dreaded  Atlantic  to  the  cod-fisheries  of  Newfoundland,7 
and  at  the  close  of  Elizabeth's  reign  English  ships  began  to 
rival  those  of  other  nations  in  the  Polar  whale-fisheries.8 

1  Cf.  Froude,  History,  ix.  pp.  30,  303,  338,  485 ;   also  Green,  History, 
ii.  pp.  422-425,  on  the  "  sea-dogs"  and  Drake. 

2  A  short  summary  of  the  deeds  of  Frobisher,  Drake,  and  Cavendish  is 
given  in  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  245-256.     See  also  Hakluyt's  Voyages. 

8  Hakluyt,  i.  246.  4  Ib.,  i.  265.  •  Craik,  Brit.  Commerce,  L  243. 

•  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  222,  notes  that  trading  voyages  both  to 
Brazil  and  Guinea  become  common  after  1530. 

7  They  had  done  so  in  Edward  VI.  'a  reign,  and  the  fisheries  are  mentioned 
in  the  2  and  3  Edward  VI. ,  c.  6.     But  only  fifteen  ships  from  England  were 
engaged  in  the  fisheries  in   1577  a«  compared   with.  X50  from    Franc*. 
Craik  (quoting  Hakluyt),  British  Commerce,  L  259. 

8  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  259,  ii.  29. 


232  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

This  reign  witnessed  also  the  rise  of  the  great  commer- 
cial companies.  The  company  of  Merchant  Adventurers 
had  indeed  existed  since  1407,  if  not  before,1  having  been 
formed  in  imitation  of  the  Hanseatic  League.  The  Russian 
Company  of  1554  was  formed  upon  the  model  of  this 
earlier  company ;  and  later  came  the  foundation  of  the 
great  East  India  Company.  The  last  was  due  to  the  results 
of  Drake's  far-famed  voyage  round  the  world,2  which  took 
three  years,  1577-80.  Shortly  after  his  return  it  was 
proposed  to  found  "  a  company  for  such  as  trade  beyond 
the  equinoctial  line,"  but  a  long  delay  took  place,  and 
finally  a  company  was  incorporated  for  the  more  definite 
object  of  trading  with  the  East  Indies.3  The  date  of  this 
famous  incorporation  was  1600,  and  in  1601  Captain 
Lancaster  made  the  first  regular  trading  voyage  on  its 
behalf.  To  this  modest  beginning  we  owe  our  present 
Indian  Empire.4 

§  141.  Remarks  on  the  Signs  and  Causes  of  the 
Expansion  of  Trade. 

Now,  if  we  look  at  the  broad  features  that  mark  the 
growth  of  sixteenth  century  trade,  we  shall  see  that  it  was 
closely  connected  with  England's  decision  to  abide  by  the 
Protestant  cause.  It  was  that  which  won  her  the  friend- 
ship of  the  Flemish  merchants  ;  it  was  the  religious  disturb- 
ances in  Flanders  that  gained  for  London  the  commercial 
supremacy  of  Europe  ;  it  was  our  quarrel  with  Roman 
Catholic  Spain  that  inspired  the  voyages  of  Drake  and 
Hawkins,  and  thus  caused  others  to  venture  forth  into  new 
and  perilous  seas,  over  which  in  course  of  time  English  mer- 
chants sailed  almost  without  a  rival.  And,  as  we  have  shown, 
the  signs  of  the  expansion  of  England  are  seen  in  events 

1  Bymer,  Foedera,  viii.  464.     It  was  an  offshoot  of  the  Mercers  Company, 
which  originated  from  the  Brotherhood  of  St  Thomas  of  Canterbury.     Cf. 
12  Henry  VII. ,  c.  6. 

2  Cf.  Froude,  History,  xi.  pp.  121-158. 

3  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  251  ;  Macpherson,  History  of  the  European 
Commerce  with  India,  pp.  72-82 ;  Stevens'  Davm  of  British  Trade  to  the 
East  Indies  contains  a  reprint  of  the  minutes  of  the  Company. 

4  For  the  history  of  the  Company,  see  ch.  xviii.,  below. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  FOREIGN  TRADE     233 

such  as  the  fall  of  the  Hansa  settlement  in  London,  and  the 
cessation  of  the  visits  of  the  Venetian  fleet.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  rapid  growth  of  the  port  of  Bristol l  in  the  west 
witnessed  to  fresh  trade  with  the  New  World,  and  the  pro- 
gress of  Boston  and  Hull2  on  the  east  coast  is  significant 
as  showing  the  development  of  our  Northern  and  Baltic 
trade,  even  to  the  extent  of  rivalling  the  great  Hansa 
towns.8  A  great  stimulus  had  arisen,  and  England  was 
now  taking  a  leading  position  among  the  nations  of  the 
world.  It  has  been  well  remarked,4  that  in  the  course  of 
the  long  reign  of  Elizabeth  the  commerce  and  navigation  of 
England  may  be  said  to  have  risen  "  through  the  whole  of 
that  space  which  in  the  life  of  a  human  being  would  be 
described  as  intervening  between  the  close  of  infancy  and 
commencing  manhood.  It  was  the  age  of  the  vigorous 
boyhood  and  adolescence  of  the  national  industry,  when, 
although  its  ultimate  conquests  were  still  afar  orT,  the  path 
that  led  to  them  was  fairly  and  in  good  earnest  entered 
upon,  and  every  step  was  one  of  progress  and  buoyant  with 
hope."  We  will  now  survey  the  condition  of  the  country 
that  was  thus  setting  forth  upon  a  new  and  active  career. 

1  The  Bristol  merchants  were  most  active  in  sending  out  exploring  and 
trading  expeditions  ;  cf.  Cunningham,  Eng.  Ind.,  i.  445-448  ;  Rogers,  Hint. 
Agric.,  iv.  84. 

2  They  had  always  been  important ;  cf.  p.  144. 

3  In  fact  a  Company  for  trading  in  the  Baltic,  called  the  East  land  Com- 
pany, was  formed  in  1579,  and  was  a  competitor  of  the  Hansa,  which 
formerly  had  had  the  monopoly  in  that  sea.     Cf,  Macpherson,  Annals  of 
Commerce,  ii.  164. 

4  Craik,  British  Commerce,  i.  239. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

ELIZABETHAN    ENGLAND 

§  142.  Prosperity  and  Pauperism. 

THE  reign  of  Elizabeth  is  generally  regarded  as  prosper- 
ous, and  so  upon  the  whole  it  was.  But  she  had  come  to 
the  throne  with  a  legacy  of  debt  from  her  father,1  Henry 
VIIL,  and  from  her  father's  counsellors,  who  guided  her 
young  brother,  Edward  VI.  Nor  had  Mary  helped  to 
alleviate  it.  "  The  minority  of  Edward,"  remarks  Froude,2 
"had  been  a  time  of  mere  thriftless  waste  and  plunder, 
while  east,  west,  north,  and  south  the  nation  had  been 
shaken  by  civil  commotions.  The  economy  with  which 
Mary  had  commenced  had  been  sacrificed  to  superstition, 
and  what  the  hail  had  left  the  locusts  had  eaten."  This 
unfortunate  Queen,  for  whom  no  historian  can  fail  to  have 
a  sentiment  of  the  sincerest  pity,  believing  that  the  spolia- 
tion of  the  monasteries  by  her  father  had  caused  the  wrath 
of  Heaven  to  descend  upon  her  realm,  stripped  the  Crown 
of  half  its  revenues  to  re-establish  the  clergy  and  to  force 
upon  the  country  a  form  of  religion  which  it  had  made  up 
its  mind  to  reject.  But  it  is  only  fair  to  remark  that  the 
religious  persecution  in  Queen  Mary's  reign  has  been  much 
exaggerated,  for  it  would  appear  that  not  more  than  three 
hundred  persons  were  actually  burnt  at  the  stake  as  Pro- 
testants, and,  even  including  those  who  died  in  prison,  the 
total  seems  not  to  have  exceeded  four  hundred.3  But  the 
power  of  the  Romish  queen  was  less  than  her  will,  and  she 
certainly  lost  both  the  confidence  and  affection  of  her  people. 
Her  treasury  was  exhausted,  the  nation  financially  ruined, 
and  in  the  latter  years  of  her  reign  famine  and  plague  had 
added  their  miseries  to  other  causes  of  suffering.4  Elizabeth 

1  Froude,  History,  vi.  108.  2  Ib. 

3  Froude  (quoting  Burghley),  History xvL  102. 

4  Ib.,  vi.  109,  and  (famine),  p.  29.. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  235 

came  to  the  throne  not  only  with  the  national  purse  empty, 
but  with  heavy  debts  owing  to  the  Antwerp  Jews,1  added 
to  a  terribly  debased  currency  and  a  dangerous  under- 
current of  social  discontent.  It  is  to  her  credit  as  a 
sovereign  that  at  her  death  danger  from  this  last  source 
had  passed  away.2  This  was  partly  due  to  the  growth  of 
wealth  and  industry  throughout  the  kingdom,  to  the  great 
gains  of  our  foreign  trade,  and  to  the  rapid  expansion  of 
our  manufactures.  But  pauperism  was  now  a  permanent 
evil,  and  legal  measures  had  to  be  taken  for  its  relief.3 
One  abiding  cause  of  it  was  the  persistent  enclosures  which 
still  went  on,  together  with  the  new  developments  in  agri- 
culture. Nevertheless,  before  the  close  of  her  reign  the 
bulk  of  the  people  became  contented  and  comfortable,  owing 
to  the  prolonged  peace  which  prevailed.  The  merchants 
and  landed  gentry,4  or  at  least  the  new  owners  of  the  soil, 
were  rich ;  the  farmers  and  master-manufacturers  were 
prosperous ;  even  the  artisans  and  labourers  were  not  hope- 
lessly poor,  especially  among  the  upper  working  classes. 
But  there  was  a  greater  tendency  towards  the  modern  con- 
ditions of  continuous  poverty  among  those  less  fortunately 
situated. 

§  143.  The  Restoration  of  the  Currency. 
There  was,  however,  one  great  reform  introduced  in 
Elizabeth's  reign  which  benefited  the  whole  nation,  and 
the  working  classes  by  no  means  least  of  all.  The  restora- 
tion of  the  currency  put  wages  and  prices  upon  an  assured 
basis,  and  from  that  time  to  this  both  master  and  man, 
whether  paying  or  receiving  wages,  knew  exactly  what  each 
was  giving  and  receiving.  No  measure  of  Elizabeth's  reign 
has  received  more  deserved  praise  than  the  reform  of  the 
coinage,  though  the  praise  is  due  not  so  much  to  the  Queen, 
who  made  a  considerable  profit  out  of  the  transaction,  but 

1  There  was  about  £200,000  owing  to  the  Jews  at  14  and  16  per  cent. 
Froude,  vi.  p.  118. 

2  For  discontent  at  the  beginning,  cf.  Froude,  viL  p.  9. 
*  See  below,  p.  260. 

4  The  old  nobility  were  scanty  and  w«ak,  the  new  were  richer  ;  Froude, 
vi.  109. 


236  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

to  the  people  at  large,  who  had  the  good  sense  to  bear 
cheerfully  the  loss  and  expense  it  involved  in  order  to 
obtain  a  lasting  gain.  The  whole  mass  of  base  money  was 
estimated,  somewhat  roughly,  at  some  £1,200,000  sterling.1 
On  the  27th  of  September  1560,  the  evils  of  an  uneven 
and  vitiated  currency  were  explained  by  a  proclamation,  in 
which  the  Queen  stated  that  the  crown  would  bear  the 
cost  of  refining  and  recoining  the  public  moneys  if  the 
nation  would  bear  cheerfully  its  share  of  the  loss,  and  the 
people  were  invited  to  bring  in  and  pay  over  in  every  market 
town,  to  persons  duly  appointed,  the  impure  money  they 
possessed.  The  total  amount  thus  collected  was  631,950 
pounds  in  weight,  and  for  this  £638,000  in  money  was 
paid  by  the  receivers  of  the  Mint.  It  yielded  when  melted 
down  244,416  pounds  of  silver,  worth,  under  the  new 
coinage  system,  £733,248  sterling.  After  paying  for  the 
cost  of  collection,  refining,  reminting,  and  other  expenses, 
there  was  a  balance  of  over  fourteen  thousand  pounds  in 
favour  of  the  Queen.  "Thus  was  this  great  matter 
ended,  and  the  reform  of  the  coin  cost  nothing  beyond 
the  thought  expended  upon  it."2 

This  important  question  being  now  disposed  of,  we  may 
turn  to  the  condition  of  the  industries  of  Elizabethan  Eng- 
land, and  first  we  must  notice  the  steady  growth  of  manu- 
factures in  a  land  hitherto  mainly  agricultural 

§  144.   The  Growth  of  Manufactures. 

The  economic  transition  before  alluded  to  (p.  131),  by 
which  England  had  developed  from  a  wool-exporting  into  a 
wool-manufacturing  country,  had  in  Elizabeth's  reign  been 
almost  completed.  The  woollen  manufacture  had  become 
an  important  element  in  the  national  wealth.  England  no 
longer  sent  her  wool  to  be  manufactured  in  Flanders, 
although  much  of  it  was  still  dyed  there.3  It  was  now 

1  Froude,  History,  vii.  p.  6. 

2  For  the  whole  transaction  see  Froude,  History,  vii.  pp.  2-9,  and  the 
Lansdowne  MSS. ,  4  ("Charges  of  refining  the  base  money  received  into 
the  Mint,  with  a  note  of  the  provisions  and  other  charges  incident  to  the 
same  "). 

8  This  continued  till  James  I.'s  reign  ;  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  33. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  237 

worked  up  at  home,  and  the  manufacturing  population  was 
not  confined  to  the  towns  only,  but  was  spreading  all  over 
the  country ; l  and  both  spinning  and  weaving  afforded 
direct  employment  for  an  increasing  number  of  workmen, 
while  even  in  agricultural  villages  they  were  frequent  bye- 
industries.  The  worsted  trade,  of  which  Norwich  was  still 
the  centre,  spread  over  all  the  Eastern  counties.2  The 
broad-cloths  of  the  West  of  England  took  the  highest  place 
among  English  woollen  stuffs.3  Even  the  North,  which 
had  lagged  so  far  behind  the  South  in  industrial  develop- 
ment, ever  since  the  harrying  it  underwent  at  the  hands  of 
William  the  Norman,  began  now  to  show  signs  of  activity 
and  new  life.  It  had,  in  this  period,  developed  special 
manufactures  of  its  own,  and  Manchester 4  cottons  and 
friezes,  York  coverlets,6  and  Halifax  cloth 6  now  held  their 
own  amongst  the  other  manufactures  of  the  country.  There 
are  several  signs  of  the  progress  of  manufactures  in  this 
period,  two  of  which  deserve  special  attention.  We  find 
that  it  was  becoming  increasingly  the  practice  for  a  master- 
manufacturer  to  employ  a  number  of  men  working  at  looms, 
either  in  their  own  houses,  or  more  or  less  under  the 
master's  control.  So  numerous  had  such  employers  become, 

1  A  well-known  historian  (Fuller,  Church  History  (ed.  1655),  p.  142)  has 
given  us  a  list  of  the  chief  seats  of  the  cloth  trade  and  its  distribution  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  which  will  illustrate  this  period  also.     In  the 
East  of  England   he   mentions  Norfolk   and   the  Norwich  fustians ;    in 
Suffolk  the  bayes  of  Sudbury  ;  in  Essex  the  Colchester  bayes  and  serges  ; 
and  also  the  broad-cloths  of  Kent.    In  the  West  he  notices  the  Devonshire 
kersies,  Welsh  friezes,  and  the  cloths  of  Worcester  and  Gloucester.     In 
the  South  Somerset  was  known  for  the  Taunton  serges,  and  Hampshire, 
Berkshire,  and  Sussex  are  all  mentioned  as  having  manufactures  of  cloth. 
In  the  North  the  "  Kendal  Greens"  of  Westmoreland,  and  the  manu- 
factures of  Manchester  and  Halifax,  in  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire  respec- 
tively, are  duly  noted.   From  this  list  it  is  evident  that  the  manufacturing 
industry  was  very  widely  spread,  and  must  often  have  been  carried  on  by 
agriculturists  as  a  bye-industry  in  agricultural  districts.     It  had  not  yet 
become  specialised. 

2  Cf.  the  14  and  15  Henry  V1IL,  c.  3,  and  the  26  Henry  VIII,  c.  16, 
which  show  that  Lynn  and  Yarmouth  also  had  manufactures. 

8  Fuller,  ut  supra. 

4  Cf.  the  5  and  6  Edward  VI.,  c.  6.     The  "cottons"  were  at  that  time 
a  kind  of  woollen  manufacture. 
8  Mentioned  in  the  34  and  35  Henry  VIII.,  c.  10. 
6  Fuller,  ut  supra. 


238  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

that  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Mary,  an  "Act  touching 
weavers"  was  passed,1  whereby  it  was  sought  to  remedy 
this  condition  of  things.  The  beginnings  of  the  factory 
system  evidently  did  not  commend  themselves  to  six- 
teenth-century statesmen.  The  Preamble  to  the  Act  sets 
forth  very  clearly  the  state  of  things  in  the  manufacturing 
industry  at  this  time.  "  The  weavers  of  this  realm,"  it 
says,  "have,  as  well  in  this  present  Parliament  as  at 
divers  other  times,  complained  that  the  rich  and  wealthy 
clothiers  do  in  many  ways  oppress  them — some  by  setting 
up  and  keeping  in  their  houses  divers  looms,  and  keeping 
and  maintaining  them  by  journeymen  and  persons  unskil- 
ful, to  the  decay  of  a  great  number  of  artificers  which 
were  brought  up  in  the  said  science  of  weaving,  with  their 
families  and  households — some  by  engrossing  of  looms  in 
their  hands  and  possession,  and  letting  them  out  at  such 
unreasonable  rents  that  the  poor  artificers  are  not  able  to 
maintain  themselves,  much  less  to  maintain  their  wives, 
families,  and  children — some  also  by  giving  much  less 
wages  and  hire  for  weaving  and  workmanship  than  in  times 
past  they  did,  whereby  they  \i.e.  the  workmen]  are  forced 
utterly  to  forsake  their  art  and  occupation,  wherein  they 
have  been  brought  up."  The  Statute  then  goes  on  to 
enact  that  "  no  person  using  the  feat  or  mystery  of  cloth- 
making  shall  keep  or  retain  or  have  in  their  houses  and 
possession  any  more  than  one  woollen  loom  at  a  time,"  if 
they  live  outside  a  city,  borough,  or  market  town  ;  nor 
shall  they  "  directly  or  indirectly  receive  or  take  any  manner 
of  profit,  gain,  or  commodity  by  letting  or  setting  any 
loom,"  on  pain  of  a  fine  of  twenty  shillings.  Weavers  who 
live  in  the  towns  are  not  to  have  more  than  two  looms.  ! 
The  intention  of  the  Act  obviously  was  to  prevent  the  cloth- 
manufacture  from  falling  into  the  power  of  large  capitalist- 
employers,  such  as  the  millowners  of  the  present  day  ;  and 
though,  of  course,  such  an  Act  was  in  the  end  powerless 
to  arrest  the  progress  of  a  system  which  necessarily  resulted 
from  the  development  of  industry,  it  is  certainly  interesting 
as  showing  how  far  that  development  had  already  proceeded. 

1  The  2  and  3  Philip  and  Mary,  c.  11. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  239 

The  time  of  the  factory  with  its  capitalist  master  and 
hundreds  of  "  hands  "  had  not  yet  arrived,  but  already  this 
glimmer  of  dawn  was  announcing  the  approaching  day. 

§  145.  Monopolies  of  Manufacturing  Towns. 

Another  important  sign  of  the  growth  of  manufactures 
is  seen  in  the  fruitless  attempts  made  in  the  sixteenth 
century  to  confine  a  particular  manufacture  to  a  particular 
town.  This  is  a  sure  indication  that  the  manufacture 
of  that  article  was  increasing  in  country  districts,  and  that 
competition  was  operating  in  a  new  and  unexpected  way 
upon  the  older  industries.  An  example  of  this  may  be 
seen  in  the  monopoly  granted  by  Parliament  in  Henry 
VIII.'s  reign1  (1530)  to  Bridport  in  Dorsetshire,  "for  the 
making  of  cables,  hawsers,  ropes,  and  all  other  tackling." 
This  monopoly  was  granted  upon  the  complaint  made  by 
the  citizens  of  Bridport,  that  their  town  "  was  like  to  be 
utterly  decayed,"  owing  to  the  competition  of  "  the  people 
of  the  adjacent  parts,"  who  were  therefore  by  this  monopoly 
forbidden  to  make  any  sort  of  rope.  The  only  result  of 
this  measure,  however,  was  to  transfer  the  rope-making 
industry  from  Dorset  to  Yorkshire,  and  Bridport  was  in  a 
worse  plight  than  before. 

In  the  same  reign  (1534)  the  inhabitants  of  Worcester, 
Evesham,  Droitwich,  Kidderminster,  and  Bromsgrove,  then 
almost  the  only  towns  in  Worcestershire,  complained  2  that 
"  divers  persons  dwelling  in  the  hamlets,  thorps,  and 
villages  of  the  county  made  all  manner  of  cloths,  and 
exercised  shearing,  fulling,  and  weaving  within  their  own 
houses,  to  the  great  depopulation  of  the  city  and  towns." 
A  monopoly  was  granted  to  the  towns,  the  only  result  of 
which  was  that  they  became  poorer  than  before,  a  great 
portion  of  the  local  industry  being  transferred  to  Leeds. 
A  little  later  (1544)  the  citizens  of  York  complain8  of  the 
competition  of  "  sundry  evil-disposed  persons  and  appren- 
tices," who  had  "  withdrawn  themselves  out  of  the  city  into 
the  country,"  and  competed  with  York  in  the  manufacture 

1  21  Henry  VIII.,  c.  12.  *  Cf.  the  26  Henry  VHI.,  c.  18. 

»  Cf.  the  34  and  35  Henry  VIIL,  c.  10. 


240  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

of  coverlets  and  blanketings.  York  obtained  a  monopoly, 
but  her  manufactures  gained  nothing  thereby.  These 
monopolies  granted  to  towns  should  not  be  confused  with 
others  granted  to  individuals  for  trading  purposes.  Of  this 
other  class  we  shall  speak  later.  The  monopolies  of  towns 
here  mentioned  are,  however,  interesting  as  illustrating  the 
growth  of  manufactures  in  all  parts  of  the  kingdom,  and 
useful  as  showing  the  futility  of  merely  protective  enact- 
ments. 

§  146.  Exports  of  Manufactures  and  Foreign  Trade. 

Besides  these  monopolies,  we  have  ample  evidence  of  the 
growth  of  our  cloth  manufactures  in  the  statements  made 
by  the  historian  Guicciardini  (1523-89),  as  to  our  exports 
to  Antwerp.  "  It  is  marvellous,"  he  says,1  "  to  think  of 
the  vast  quantity  of  drapery  sent  by  the  English  into  the 
Netherlands,  being  undoubtedly  one  year  with  another 
above  200,000  pieces  of  all  kinds,  which,  at  the  most 
moderate  rate  of  25  crowns  per  piece,  is  5,000,000  crowns, 
so  that  these  and  other  merchandise  brought  by  the  English 
to  us,  or  carried  from  us  to  them,  may  make  the  annual 
amount  to  more  than  12,000,000  crowns,"  which  is 
equivalent  to  some  £2,400,000.  The  evidence  of  the 
Elizabethan  writer  Harrison  2  on  this  point  is  also  interest- 
ing. "  The  wares  that  they  (i.e.  merchants)  carry  out  of 
the  realm  are  for  the  most  part  broad-cloths  and  kersies  of 
all  colours ;  likewise  cottons,  friezes,  rugs,  tin,  wool,  our 
best  beer,  baize,  fustian,  mockadoes  (tufted  and  plain), 
lead,  fells,  etcetera ;  which,  being  shipped  at  sundry  ports 
of  our  coasts,  are  borne  from  thence  into  all  quarters  of  the 
world,  and  there  either  exchanged  for  other  wares  or  ready 
money,  to  the  great  gain  and  commodity  of  our  merchants." 
Here  it  will  be  seen  how  important  a  place  English  cloth 
manufactures  take  in  Harrison's  somewhat  confused  list  of 
exports ;  while  the  other  commodities  mentioned,  such  as 
lead  and  skins  or  fells,  show  that  the  older  staples  of  our 

1  Quoted  in  Macpherson,  Annals  of  Commerce,  ii.  127. 

2  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  Book  III.  ch.  iv.,  edition  1557  ;  pages 
10  and  11  in  the  Camclot  Series  edition. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  241 

trade  were  still  worthy  of  notice.  Harrison  also  makes  a 
very  interesting  remark  upon  the  direction  as  well  as  the 
character  of  our  foreign  trade,  which  is  well  worth  quoting. 
"Whereas  in  times  past,"  he  says,1  "their  chief  trade  was 
into  Spain,  France,  Flanders,  Danske  (Denmark),  Norway, 
Scotland,  and  Ireland  only,  now  in  these  days,  as  men  not 
contented  with  these  journeys,  they  have  sought  out  the 
East  and  West  Indies,  and  made  now  and  then  suspicious 
voyages,  not  only  unto  the  Canaries  and  New  Spain  (i.e., 
Spanish  America),  but  likewise  into  Cathay,  Muscovy,  and 
Tartaria,  and  the  regions  thereabout,  from  whence,  as  they 
say,  they  bring  home  great  commodities.  But  alas  ! "  he 
adds,  "I  see  not  by  all  their  travel  that  the  prices  of 
things  are  any  whit  abated."  The  rise  in  prices,  how- 
ever, was  not  due,  as  Harrison  thought  it  was,  to  the  in- 
crease of  trade,  but  to  other  causes  upon  which  we  have 
already  commented.  One  other  remark  of  his  is  worth 
attention,  as  showing  not  only  the  growth  of  commerce  but 
the  importance  of  the  merchant  class  in  the  social  life  of 
the  country :  "  They  often  change  estate  with  gentlemen, 
as  gentlemen  do  with  them,  by  a  mutual  conversion  of  one 
into  the  other."2  At  one  time  this  would  have  been 
impossible,  but  this  mention  of  the  fact  shows  us  how  far 
the  old  order  had  changed. 

§  147.  The  Flemish  Immigration. 

English  progress  in  manufactures  and  trade  was  also 
about  this  time  greatly  aided  by  the  arrival  of  Dutch  and 
Flemish  Protestant  refugees  who  fled  from  the  persecutions 
of  Roman  Catholic  rulers  to  a  more  tolerant  country.  This 
immigration  of  foreign  Protestants  had  begun,  as  we  saw,8 
some  time  before  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  but  it  increased 
in  numbers  soon  after  Elizabeth's  accession,  when  the  death 
of  Mary  had  relieved  England  from  the  fear  of  Romish 
persecution.  A  numerous  body  of  Flemings  came  over  in 
1561,  and  starting  from  Deal,  spread  to  Sandwich,  Rye, 

'Harrison,  Description  of  England,  Book  III.   ch.   iv.,  edition  1577; 
pages  10  and  11  in  the  Camelot  Series  edition. 
a  76.,  p.  9,  Camelot  edition.  *  Above,  p.  221,  noU  3. 

O 


242  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

and  other  parts  of  Kent.1  Another  body  settled  in  Norwich, 
and  over  Norfolk  generally.2  In  1570  there  were  4000 
natives  of  the  Netherlands  in  Norwich  alone.3  There  was 
also  an  important  settlement  in  Colchester.4  After  the 
sack  of  Antwerp  in  1585,  the  immigration  largely  increased. 
The  new  arrivals  introduced  or  improved  many  manufactures, 
such  as  those  of  silk,  cutlery,  clock-making,  hats,  and 
pottery.6  But  the  greatest  improvements  they  made  were 
in  weaving  and  lace-making.  They  greatly  developed 
"every  sort  of  workmanship  in  wool  and  flax."6  The  lace 
manufacture  was  introduced  by  refugees  from  Alenson  and 
Valenciennes  into  Oranfield  (Beds.),  and  from  that  town  it 
extended  to  Buckinghamshire,  Oxfordshire,  and  Northamp- 
tonshire ;  while  other  immigrants  founded  the  manufacture 
of  the  well-known  Honiton  lace  in  Devon.7  It  is  interest- 
ing thus  to  notice  how  much  we  owed  to  foreign  teachers 
in  earlier  times,  for  the  reigns  of  Edward  III.,  Elizabeth, 
and  later  of  Charles  II.,  were  all  signalised  by  large  influxes 
of  people  from  the  Low  Countries,  bringing  with  them 
increased  skill  and  often  considerable  capital 

An  interesting  testimony  to  the  influence  of  these 
refugees  is  afforded  by  Harrison 8  in  his  Description  of 
England.  Speaking  about  our  wool,  he  remarks :  "  In 
time  past  the  use  of  this  commodity  consisted  for  the  most 
part  in  cloth  and  woolsteds,  but  now,  by  'means  of  strangers 
succoured  here  from,  domestic  persecution,  the  same  hath 
been  employed  unto  sundry  other  uses ;  as  mockados,  bays, 
vellures,  grograines,  &c.,  whereby  the  makers  have  reaped 
no  small  commodity." 

§  148.  Monopolies. 

The  influences  above  mentioned  all  tended  to  promote 
the  growth  of  our  manufactures,  and  there  was,  besides, 
considerable  industrial  progress.  It  is  noticeable,  however, 

1  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  114  ;  Lecky,  History  of  Eighteenth  Century,  i.  191 ; 
Boys,  History  of  Sandwich,  p.  740  ;  and  Cunningham,  Eng.  Ind.,  ii.  36. 

2  Moens,  The  Walloons  (Huguenot  Society),  18,  79,  264. 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  115.  *  Cunningham,  ii.  37. 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  114.  6  Ib.,  p.  115.  7  Ib. 

8  Book  ILL  ch.  viii.,  ed.  1577  ;  Camelot  series  ed.,  p.  155. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  243 

that  in  the  Elizabethan  period  there  arises  an  eager  dis- 
cussion about  monopolies.  The  fact  that  this  question  was 
now  raised  is  sufficient  to  indicate  the  growth  of  a  com- 
petitive spirit  almost  unfamiliar  to  mediaeval  industry, 
and  to  show  that  industrial  life  was  growing  stronger 
and  more  self-assertive.  Merchants  and  manufacturers 
alike  were  beginning  to  resent  more  keenly  the  inter- 
ference of  government  with  industry,  and  more  especially 
that  form  of  state  interference  which  took  the  shape  of 
granting  either  to  individuals  or  to  a  corporation  the 
exclusive  right  of  producing  or  trading  in  any  particular 
commodity.  A  strong  feeling  is  manifested  against  the 
possessors  of  monopolies,  and  in  the  closing  years  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign  there  took  place  in  Parliament  that  celebrated 
debate  in  which  both  the  monopolies  and  their  holders 
were  severely  attacked.  No  doubt  there  was,  as  usual,  a 
fair  amount  of  political  exaggeration  and  partisan  statement 
introduced — for  we  need  not  imagine  that  the  Elizabethan 
members  of  parliament  were  other  than  human — but  there 
is  also  no  doubt  that  a  real  grievance  underlay  the  com- 
plaints then  made.  A  member  spoke  of  the  "burden  of 
monstrous  and  unconscionable  substitutes  to  the  monopolitans 
of  starch,  tin,  fish,  cloth,  oil,  vinegar,  salt,  and  I  know  not 
•what — nay,  what  not  ?  The  principallest  commodities  of 
my  town  and  country  are  ingrossed  into  the  hands  of  these 
bloodsuckers  of  the  common-wealth ; " l  and  the  general 
feeling  of  the  House  of  Commons  was  so  strong,  that 
Elizabeth  thought  it  best  to  annul  the  monopolies  then 
existing,  though  she  was  almost  certainly  within  the  legal 
limits  of  her  prerogative  in  originally  granting  them.  Her 
successor,  however,  James  I.,  used  his  prerogative  to  create 
so  many  new  monopolies  that  Parliament  again  protested 
in  1609,  and  he  also  revoked  them  all.  But  after  the 
suspension  of  Parliamentary  government  in  1614,  they 
were  granted  again,  till  in  1621  their  existence  was  one  of 
the  main  grievances  which  the  House  of  Commons  then 
brought  before  the  king.2  At  a  conference  with  the  House 

1  D'Ewes,  Complete  Journal  of  the.  Houses  of  Lords  and  Common*,  648. 

2  Cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  23. 


244  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

of  Lords  the  Commons  offered  to  prove  "  that  the  patents  of 
gold  and  silver  thread,  of  inns  and  alehouses,  and  power  to 
compound  for  obsolete  laws,  of  the  price  of  horse-meat, 
starch,  cords,  tobacco-pipes,  salt,  train-oil,  and  the  rest  were 
all  illegal ;  howbeit  they  touched  not  the  tender  point  of 
prerogative,  but,  in  restoring  the  subjects'  liberty,  were 
careful  to  preserve  the  king's  honour."  x  Three  patents  or 
monopolies  were  more  particularly  complained  of:  (1)  that 
of  inns  and  hostelries,  (2)  that  of  alehouses,  and  (3)  that  of 
gold  and  silver  thread.2  The  first  two  were  monopolies 
granting  to  individuals  the  power  of  licensing  inns  and 
taverns,  and  had  led  to  great  abuses,  though  it  is  said  in 
defence  of  the  patent  that  the  original  intention  was  to 
place  these  houses  under  some  kind  of  supervision  in  order 
to  check  evils  that  were  admittedly  rife  in  them.3  The 
monopoly  of  the  manufacture  of  gold  and  silver  thread, 
granted  to  Sir  Giles  Mompesson,  was  looked  upon  with 
disfavour  as  tending  to  exhaust  the  stock  of  the  precious 
metals  in  this  country.4  King  James  warmly  condemned 
these  and  all  other  monopolies,  asserting  that  it  made  "  his 
hair  stand  upright"  to  think  how  his  people  had  been 
robbed  thereby,5  and,  though  he  waited  three  years  before 
doing  anything  decisive,  they  were  all  abolished  in  1624.6 
The  evil  was  not  yet,  however,  by  any  means  entirely 
suppressed,  for  it  took  another  shape,  monopolies  being 
granted  by  Charles  I.  to  corporations,7  though  not  to 
individuals.  His  object  was  to  increase  the  royal  revenue, 
to  which  purpose  indeed  almost  every  expedient  was  applied 
that  had  any  colour  of  legality.  In  this  he  was  certainly 
successful,  for  he  obtained  considerable  sums  of  money, 
receiving  in  one  year  £20,000  for  soap  alone.8  But  great 

1  Rushworth,  Historical  Collections,  i.  24. 

2  Cf.  James  L's  speech  in  Rush  worth's  Hist.  Collections,  i.  26. 

3  Cunningham,  Growth  of  English  Industry,  ii.  158. 

4  Ib.,  ii.  159,  and  Gardiner,  History,  iv.  18. 

5  See  his  hypocritical   but   amusing  speech  quoted  by  Craik,  British 
Commerce,  ii.  27,  28. 

8  Statute  21  James  I.,  c.  3. 

7  See  Colepepper's  speech  below ;  and  Dowell,  Taxation  and  Taxes  in 
England,  i.  244. 
"  Gardiner,  History,  viii.  75. 


ELIZABETHAN   ENGLAND  245 

discontent  was  caused  by  monopolies  of  such  common  and 
necessary  articles,  and  it  was  seen  that  the  form  of  a 
"  corporation  "  was  only  a  cloak  for  individuals  to  increase 
their  private  gains.  In  the  Long  Parliament,  Colepepper 
exclaimed  indignantly,  after  reciting  numerous  grievances 
against  the  "  monopolisers  "  : l  "  Mr  Speaker,  they  will  not 
bate  us  a  pin ;  we  may  not  buy  our  own  clothes  without 
their  brokerage.  These  are  the  leeches  that  have  sucked 
the  commonwealth  so  hard,  that  it  is  become  almost  hectical. 
And  some  of  these  are  ashamed  of  their  right  names ;  they 
have  a  wizard  to  hide  the  brand  made  by  that  good  law  in 
the  last  Parliament  of  King  James  ;  they  shelter  themselves 
under  the  name  of  a  corporation ;  they  make  bye-laws 
which  serve  their  turn  to  squeeze  us  and  fill  their  purses." 
The  system,  however,  of  granting  these  patents  to  corpora- 
tions did  not  cease  either  then  or  subsequently  under 
Cromwell  and  Charles  II.,  but  the  government  took  care 
only  to  grant  monopolies  for  such  purposes  as  did  not  cause 
an  outburst  of  popular  feeling.2  The  system  has  in  fact 
never  entirely  ceased,  for  the  modern  practice  of  granting 
patents  for  a  limited  time  to  inventors  of  new  processes  is 
only  a  modification  of  the  old  monopolies,  and  was  pre- 
valent two  hundred  years  ago  as  well  as  now.3  But  what 
is  noticeable  in  the  seventeenth  century  is  the  almost 
universal  acceptance  of  the  principle  of  monopoly  as  opposed 
to  competition,  except  in  those  cases  where  monopoly  was 
clearly  seen  to  be  injurious  to  the  common  welfare.  The 
people  might  object  to  a  monopoly  of  soap  or  salt 4  because 
they  felt  its  effects  directly ;  but  they  considered  it  quite 
just  and  proper  that  a  company  like  the  East  Indian  should 
have  a  monopoly  of  Asiatic  trade.  Even  when  the  Commons 
came  into  conflict  with  the  Crown  it  was  to  them  a  question 
more  of  constitutional  than  of  economic  importance ;  they 

1  Parl.  Hist.,ii.  656. 

2  Cf,  also  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  168. 

*  The  Act  of  1624  abolishing  ordinary  monopolies  yet  granted  them  for 
twenty-one  years  to  new  industries,  and  to  new  processes  for  fourteen 
years.     21  James  I. ,  c.  3. 

*  For  that  on  salt,  c/.  Part.  Hid.,  i.  1205;  Strafford's  Letter*,  i.  193; 
and  Gardiner,  History,  viii.  285. 


246  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

were  trying  to  regain  rights  which  had  been  for  some  time 
in  abeyance,  and  to  check  the  menacing  growth  of  royal 
prerogative.  As  for  the  Crown,  from  Elizabeth  onwards, 
there  can  be  little  doubt,  although  historians  have  sought 
to  excuse  its  action  by  suggesting  that  it  had  at  heart  the 
proper  regulation  of  industry,1  that  in  most  cases  all  that 
was  aimed  at  was  an  increase  of  royal  revenue  or  a  ready 
and  easy  means  of  rewarding  royal  favourites.2  There  were 
of  course,  exceptions ;  and  occasionally  genuine  attempts 
were  made  to  improve  some  languishing  industry 3  by  the 
doubtful  method  of  a  monopoly,  but  the  requirements  of 
the  royal  purse  were  the  usual  guide  in  matters  of  this 
kind.  Gradually,  however,  the  general  acquiescence  in  the 
monopoly  system  which  marks  this  period  gave  way  before 
the  progress  of  the  spirit  of  competition,  and  though  it  was 
left  to  the  statesmen  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  perceive 
that  industry  is  best  left  as  far  as  possible  unhampered  by 
government  intervention,  we  hear  but  little  of  this  particular 
form  of  state  regulation  as  trade  and  industry  expanded. 

§  149.   The  Revival  of  the  Graft  Gilds. 

We  have  mentioned  in  speaking  of  monopolies  that  one 
excuse  for  them  was  that  the  state  might  seek  thereby  to 
regulate  or  supervise  particular  industries.  Whether  the 
State  actually  did  so  or  not,  it  seems  to  have  been  thought 
necessary  to  return  to  some  institution  such  as  the  old 
craft-gilds,  which  had  practically  been  annihilated  by  the 
confiscation  of  their  lands  under  Edward  VI.'s  guardian, 
Somerset.4  Certainly  in  Elizabeth's  reign  the  gilds  were 
useless,  and  powerless  to  exercise  any  real  influence  over 
the  crafts  which  they  were  supposed  to  represent.5  But 

1  Of.  Gardiner,  History  of  England,  iv.  7,  and  see  his  whole  chapter 
(xxiiii.)  on  the  monopolies. 

2  The  monopoly  of  sweet  wines  granted  by  Elizabeth  to  Essex  was  such 
a  case. 

1  E.g.,  the  patent  granted  to  Cockayne  for  dyeing  and  dressing  cloth; 
Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  165. 

4  See  above,  p.  208. 

5  See  the  petition  in  1571  by  fourteen  London  crafts ;  Clode,  Early  Hist, 
of  Merchant  Taylors,  p.  204. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  247 

under  this  queen  there  came  a  sort  of  revival,  or  at  least  a 
reconstruction  of  the  old  system.  New  companies  were 
incorporated  for  many  trades,  the  ostensible  reason  being 
the  supervision  of  the  quality  of  the  wares  produced  in  that 
trade.  The  real  cause,  however,  was  no  doubt  the  exist- 
ence of  such  "  companies "  among  the  Flemish  and  other 
immigrants,1  who,  as  we  saw,  came  to  England  in  such 
large  numbers  at  this  time.  Since  these  foreigners  had 
their  own  associations  and  met  in  their  own  "  halls  "  or  gild 
houses,2  it  is  not  surprising  that  English  manufacturers  and 
merchants,  either  from  feelings  of  jealousy  or  imitation,  or 
both,  should  wish  to  have  similar  and  privileged  organisations. 
But  these  new  institutions  differed  from  the  old  craft-gilds 
in  several  ways.  They  no  longer  derived  their  authority 
from  municipalities,  but  from  the  Crown  or  from  Parliament. 
"They  were  constituted  from  outside,  not  from  inside  the 
town."8  Moreover,  they  were  associations  of  capitalists, 
or  of  capitalist  employers,  rather  than  of  craftsmen,  as  the 
old  gilds  used  to  be,  and  were  obliged  to  pay  heavily  for 
their  patents  or  charters.4  Again,  various  trades  were  often 
combined  in  one  company,  and  there  was  often  no  pretence 
of  supervising  the  wares  of  all  the  trades  thus  associated,5 
though  in  some  few  cases  the  companies  were  empowered 
to  exercise  supervision  over  the  quality  of  goods.  Thus 
the  haberdashers,  saddlers,  curriers,  and  shoemakers  had 
supervisory  rights,  and  in  London  these  rights  seem  to 
have  been  exercised  with  some  effect.6  In  the  rural 
districts,  however,  supervision,  even  when  supposed  to  exist, 
was  very  lax.  Still,  the  revival  of  these  companies  is 
interesting  as  a  kind  of  continuation,  though  on  considerably 
different  lines,  of  the  gilds  of  mediaeval  times. 

§  150.  Agriculture. 

But  we  must  turn  now  from  manufacturing  progress  to 
what  was  then  still  the  greatest  industry  of  the  country, 

1  C/.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  47,  and  the  note  there. 

*  76.,  quoting  Morant,  Essex,  i.  77.  *  Cunningham,  tU  supra,  q.v. 
4  The  upholsterers  of  London  paid  £100  to  Elizabeth  for  their  charter  ; 

»6.,ii.48.  •/&. 

•  Cf.  Act  5  Eliz.,  c.  8,  §  31,  and  Cunningham,  ii.  48. 


248  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

and  glance  at  the  condition  of  agriculture  in  Elizabethan 
England.  Here  the  advance  had  been  slow,  but  yet  it  was 
substantial,  and  a  proof  of  progress  is  to  be  noticed  in  the 
fact  that  towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  com- 
petition was  making  itself  felt  among  tenants  for  farms. 
Competitive  rents1  had  been  hitherto  almost  entirely 
unknown  in  England,  but  now  were  becoming  more  frequent, 
resulting  of  course  in  a  rise  of  rent  But  the  competition 
itself  in  this  case  shows  progress,2  and  this  would  also  seem 
to  be  indicated  by  the  comfortable  condition  of  the  yeomanry 
in  this  period.3  The  growth  of  our  manufactures  helped  of 
course  to  promote  sheep-farming,  not  only  (as  before)  on 
the  part  of  great  landowners,  but  even  of  ordinary,  moderate 
farmers.  Upon  this  point  Harrison  mentions  an  important 
fact 4 :  "  And  there  is  never  an  husbandman  (for  now  I 
speak  not  of  our  great  sheep-masters,  of  whom  some  one 
man  hath  20,000)  but  hath  more  or  less  of  this  cattle 
(sheep)  feeding  on  his  fallows  and  short  grounds,  which 
yield  the  finer  fleece."  The  same  writer  also  mentions 
that  sometimes  grazing  was  preferred  to  tillage,  because  it 
required  less  care  and  capital,  but  he  does  not  lay  so  much 
stress  on  this  as  would  lead  us  to  suppose  that  this  change 
was  regarded  as  so  great  an  evil  as  it  was  formerly.5  He 
seems  to  think  it  rather  characteristic  of  a  "  mean  gentle- 
man "  to  change  arable  land  into  pasture,  for  he  speaks  6  of 
"  a  mean  gentleman  who  hath  cast  up  all  his  tillage  because 
he  boasteth  how  he  can  buy  his  grain  in  the  market  better 
cheap  than  he  can  sow  his  land,"  and  adds  that  "  the  rich 
grazier  often  doth  also  upon  the  like  device,  because  grazing 
requireth  a  smaller  household  and  less  attendance  and 
charge."7  But  besides  grazing  and  sheep-farming,  which 
had  long  since  risen  into  importance,  our  agriculture  had 
improved  in  several  respects.  Here  foreign  influence, 

1  Cf.  Norden's  Surveyor's  Dialogues  (first  edition,  1607),  and  Rogers, 
Hint.  Agric.  and  Prices,  v.  42,  43.  3  lb.,  v.  43. 

3  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  Camelot  series  edition,  p.  12. 

4/6.,p.  156. 

5  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  52,  thinks  the  mischief  of  over- 
much grazing  declined  at  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Cf.  also 
Froude,  History,  vii.  p.  10.  «  Harrison,  «.  «. ,  p.  36.  7  76. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  249 

especially  that  of  the  Low  Countries,1  is  again  visible. 
Already  a  change  in  the  mode  of  cultivation  had  been 
brought  about,  not  so  great  as  that  which  took  place  in  the 
two  succeeding  centuries,  but  still  quite  perceptible.  A 
larger  capital  was  brought  to  bear  upon  the  land,2  the  breed 
of  horses  and  cattle  was  improved,8  and  more  intelligent 
use  was  made  of  manure  and  dressings.4  It  was  said  that 
"  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  days  good  husbandry  began  to  take 
place."6  In  addition  to  these  improvements,  the  coming 
of  the  Flemings  and  Dutch  introduced  several  new  vege- 
tables. The  refugees  cultivated  in  their  gardens  carrots, 
celery,  and  cabbages,  which  were  previously  either  unknown 
or  very  scarce  in  this  country,8  and  from  the  garden  these 
plants  were  introduced  into  the  farm.7  The  most  important 
service  to  agriculture,  however,  was  the  introduction  of  the 
hop,  which  is  said  to  have  been  brought  to  England  by 
some  Flemish  as  early8  as  1524,  and  later  in  the  century, 
in  Elizabeth's  reign,  the  hop  gardens  of  Kent  had  already 
become  famous,9  and  have  remained  so  ever  since.  As 
regards  wheat,  it  is  noticeable  that  its  price  was  now  rising 
considerably,  but  was  subject  to  remarkable  fluctuations, 
varying  from  5s.  to  25s.  a  quarter10  in  the  last  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  The  average  price,  however  (from  1540 
to  1582),  was  13s.  10£d.,  a  considerable  increase  upon 
that  of  the  previous  century  and  a  half,  when  (from  1401 
to  1540)  it  was  only  a  farthing  under  six  shillings.11  This 
may  have  been  due  to  the  Elizabethan  corn  laws 12  or  possibly 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.  and  Prices,  v.  45,  64.  He  also  mentions  that  this 
influence  was  first  to  be  noticed  in  the  eastern  counties  of  England, 
because  they  had  close  business  connections  with  Holland  and  Flanders. 
Cf.  also  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  p.  26,  Camelot  edition. 

3  Green,  History  of  England,  ii.  387.  *  Ib. 

4  Cf.  Gervase  Markham's  works,  The  English  Husbandman  (1613),  and 
the  Farewell  to  Husbandry  (4th  edition,  1649),  and  remarks  in  Rogers, 
Hist.  Agric.,  v.  62. 

6  Dymock,  Samuel  Hartlib,  his  Legacy,  p.  52  (1651). 

8  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  57.  r  /ft.,  v.  50. 

8  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  29. 

9  Ib.     They  were  also  grown  in  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  and  Essex  ;  Norden, 
in  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  44. 

10  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.  and  Prices,  iv.  270,  271.        "  Ib.,  Tablet,  iv.  292. 
12  Cunningham,  Orowth  of  Industry,  ii.  64,  55. 


250  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

to  the  increase  of  population ;  but,  however  that  may  be,  it 
had  the  effect  of  encouraging  tillage  once  more.  But  the 
great  advance  in  agriculture  had  not  yet  come.  That  was 
reserved  for  the  next  two  centuries.  Meanwhile  the  greater 
part  of  rural  England  was  going  on  in  much  the  same 
old  ways.  In  spite  of  numerous  enclosures,  the  primitive 
common  field  system  was  still  in  vogue  among  ordinary 
husbandmen,1  and  the  innate  conservatism  of  the  agricul- 
turist was  only  here  and  there  disturbed  by  the  efforts  of  a 
few  adventurous  spirits  who  were  introducing  new  plants 
and  new  methods. 

§  151.  Social  Comforts. 

All  this  increase  of  the  national  wealth  in  commerce, 
manufactures,  and  industry  produced  important  changes 
in  the  mode  of  living.  The  standard  of  comfort  became 
higher.2  Food  became  more  wholesome.  As  agriculture 
improved  and  animals  could  be  kept  through  the  winter 
with  greater  ease,  salt  meat  and  salt  fish  no  longer  formed 
the  staple  food  of  the  lower  classes  for  half  the  year. 
Brickmaking 3  had  been  re-discovered  about  1450,  and 
by  the  time  of  Elizabeth  the  wooden  or  wattled  houses 
(p.  81)  had  generally  been  replaced,  at  least  among  all  but 
the  poorer  class,  with  dwellings  of  brick  and  stone.4  The 
introduction  of  chimneys  and  the  lavish  use  of  glass  also 
helped  to  improve  the  people's  dwellings  ;5  and,  indeed,  the 
houses  of  the  rich  merchants,  or  the  lords  of  the  manors, 
were  now  quite  luxuriously  furnished.6  Carpets  had 
superseded  the  old  filthy  flooring  of  rushes  ;  pillows  and 
cushions  were  found  in  all  decent  houses ; 7  and  the 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  49,  illustrates  this  from  the  survey  of  Gam- 
lingay  (Cambs.),  made  for  Merbon  College,  Oxford,  in  March  1602. 

*  See  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  Bk.  III.  ch.  i.  ed.  1577:  "Of 
the  food  and  diet  of  the  English."— Camelot  edn.,  pp.  84-106. 

8  Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation  of  History,  p.  279. 

4  See  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  Bk.  II.  ch.  x.  edn.  1577,  Camelot 
edn.,  p.  117. 

5  Ib.,  pp.  116  and  119  of  Camelot  edn. 

6  Ib.     "  The  furniture  of  our  houses  also  exceedeth,  and  is  grown  in 
manner  even  to  passing  delicacy." 

7  Ib.,  p.  118,  Camelot  edn.  (for  carpets),  p.  119  (pillows,  etc.). 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  251 

quantity  of  carved  woodwork x  of  this  period  shows  that 
men  cared  for  something  more  than  mere  utility  in  their 
surroundings.  The  lavishness  of  new  wealth  was  seen,  too, 
in  a  certain  love  of  display,  of  colour,  and  of  "  purple  and 
fine  linen,"  which  characterises  the  dress  of  the  Elizabethan 
age.2  The  old  sober  life  and  thought  of  mediaeval  England 
had  been  entirely  revolutionised  by  the  sudden  opening  of 
the  almost  fabulous  glories  of  the  New  World,  and  men 
revelled  joyously  in  the  new  prospects  of  the  wealth  of  the 
wondrous  West.  There  was,  moreover,  now  far  greater 
security  of  life  and  property  than  of  old,  and  consequently 
the  old  fortified  castles  of  mediaeval  days  had  disappeared, 
as  the  need  for  fortification  of  residences  passed  away,  and 
the  nobility  and  gentry  now  sought  comfort  and  magnificence 
rather  than  strength  and  security  in  their  abodes.8  And 
with  this  increased  security  and  the  growth  of  wealth  we 
notice  also  the  growth  of  capitalism4  and  of  a  capitalist 
class,  so  that  the  merchant  of  Elizabeth's  days  was  able  to 
engage  in  enterprises  far  larger  than  those  of  his  predecessors. 
But  yet  there  were  the  seeds  of  pauperism  in  the  land,  and 
all  the  wealth  of  the  merchants  and  the  adventurers  of 
Elizabethan  England  did  not  prevent  the  sure  and  inevit- 
able Nemesis  that  followed  upon  the  crimes  and  follies  of 
Elizabeth's  father  and  his  court. 

§  152.   The  Condition  of  the  Labourers. 

For  it  is  impossible,  in  glancing  at  the  condition  of 
labour  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  to  forget  the  disastrous 
economic  changes  wrought  by  the  actions  of  Henry  VIII. 
and  his  followers.  Compared  with  the  fifteenth  century, 
the  poverty  of  the  wage-earners  in  Elizabeth's  reign  was 
often  great  indeed,  though  even  then  not  so  bad  as  it  sub- 
sequently became.  It  was  not  that  the  working  classes,  as 
a  whole,  were  badly  off  in  the  Elizabethan  age,  for  there 
was  undoubtedly  a  fair  amount  of  prosperity;  but  there 

1  Green,  History,  ii.  391,  notices  this. 

J  Harrison,  u.  «.,  Bk.  III.  ch.  ii.,  edn.  1577.     Camelot  edn.,  pp.  107-112. 

1  Cf.  Green,  History,  ii.  392. 

4  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  6, 


252  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

were  greater  extremes  amongst  them  than  before,  and  a 
larger  number  of  indigent  in  their  ranks.  Many  of  the 
petty  copy-holders  who  had  been  dispossessed  of  their  lands 
by  the  enclosures  of  previous  years  had  fallen  into  beggary  ;x 
the  less  provident  of  the  labourers  had  lost  their  mediaeval 
curtilages  and  plots  of  land  in  the  same  way,2  and  therefore 
there  was  a  more  numerous  class  now  dependent  for  their 
livelihood  on  wages  only.3  Consequently  there  was  often 
a  large  number  of  unemployed  wage-earners,  and  fluctua- 
tions in  employment  became  more  seriously  and  more 
acutely  felt.  Contemporary  writers  complain  that  the  rich 
were  still  often  encroaching  on  the  poor  man's  land,4  as 
they  have  frequently  done  since  Scriptural  times  ;  and  the 
labouring  man  was  often  too  poor  to  buy  himself  corn  5 — 
a  state  of  things  which  did  not  occur  so  frequently  when 
everyone  had  some  share  in  the  land  and  did  not  depend 
on  wages  only.  A  great  loss  must  also  have  been  felt  by 
the  working  classes  in  the  abolition  of  the  old  gilds  and 
the  decay  of  the  old  customs  associated  with  them.  The 
merry  gild-feast  was  no  longer  a  feature  of  village  life,6  and 
holidays  and  festivals  were  reduced  to  a  lesser  number.7 
From  this  time  forward  we  shall  not  find  much  advance  in 
the  lot  of  the  labourer.  One  of  his  most  prosperous  periods 
was  fast  approaching  its  close,  and  on  the  whole  the  next 
two  centuries  show  a  steady  deterioration. 

Of  course  the  condition  of  labour  will  be  best  seen  by  taking 
examples  of  the  wages  then  given.  In  Elizabeth's  reign,  then, 
we  may  reckon  8  the  yearly  wages  of  an  agricultural  labourer 

1  Froude,  History,  vii.  p.  9. 

2  "Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.  and  Prices,  iv.  755.        *  Cf.  the  Act  31  Eliz.,  c.  7. 
4  Harrison,   Description  of  England,   Bk.  II.    ch.  7,  ed.    1577 ;  p.   19, 

<3amelot  edn. 

6  Ib.,  Bk.  III.  ch.  i.  ;  page  96,  Camelot  edn. 

8  Ib.,  Bk.  II.  ch.  v.,  edn.  1577  ;  p.  78,  Camelot  edn.  :  "The  superfluous 
numbers  of  wakes,  guilds,  fraternities,  churchales  are  well  diminished  and 
laid  aside."  Harrison  approved  of  their  abolition,  it  seems.  But  c/. 
Blomfield's  Norfolk,  iii.  185,  who  says,  "  The  poor  of  the  parish  always 
were  partakers  with  them,"  which  shows  that  they  helped  to  relieve 
pauperism. 

7  Harrison  also  thought  these  "very  well  reduced."    But  he  was  a 
•clergyman,  not  a  labourer.     Description,  ut  supra. 

8  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.  and  Prices,  iv.  737,  738. 


ELIZABETHAN   ENGLAND  253 

at  about  £8,  4s.,  and  the  cost  of  living,  which  now  included 
house  rent,  formerly  unknown,  at  £8,  thus  leaving  a  very 
narrow  margin  for  contingencies.  Daily  wages  were 1  (in 
1563) — for  artisans,  8d.  a  day  in  winter  and  9d.  in  sum- 
mer ;  for  labourers,  6d.  in  winter  and  7d.  in  summer,  and 
in  harvest-time  occasionally  8d.  or  even  lOd.  This  is  not 
very  much  more  than  the  wages  paid  at  the  close  of  the 
fifteenth  century z  (viz.,  artisans  3s.  a  week  and  labourers 
2s.),  but  the  price  of  food  had  risen  almost  to  three  times 
the  old  average,  while  wages  had  only  risen  s  in  the  propor- 
tion of  1  to  1'72.  Moreover,  a  new  system  was  in  this 
reign  introduced  for  arranging  wages. 

§   153.  Assessment  of  Wages  by  Justices. 

The  celebrated  Statute,4  by  which  this  system  of  the 
legal  arrangement  of  wages  was  introduced,  has  rightly 
been  called  a  monumental  work  of  legislation.5  "  Taken 
in  conjunction  with  the  Poor  Law  of  the  same  year,  which 
was,  however,  subsequently  modified,  it  forms  a  great 
system  for  controlling  both  the  employed  and  the  un- 
employed ;  all  the  experience  of  preceding  reigns  is 
gathered  together,  and  the  principal  statute  was  so  well 
framed  that  it  continued  to  be  maintained  for  more  than 
two  centuries."  6  It  certainly  had  an  immense,  controlling 
influence  upon  the  destinies  of  the  working  classes,  though 
opinions  have  differed  widely  as  to  whether  that  influence 
was  beneficial  or  otherwise.  Before  discussing  this  point, 
however,  we  will  briefly  examine  the  provisions  of  this 
famous  Act. 

The  preamble  is  remarkable  in  that,  unlike  all  previous 
Statutes  of  Labourers,  it  shows  a  tender  concern  for  the 
welfare  of  the  labourer,  and  expresses  a  fear  that  his  wages 
may  occasionally  be  too  low.  It  states  that  "  the  wages 
and  allowances  rated  and  limited  in  many  of  the  said 

1  From  the  proclamation  of  Elizabeth  for  the  county  of  Rutland  in 
1563.     Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  121. 

2  Above,  p.  173.  *  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  757. 
4  The  Act  5  Eliz.,  c.  4  (1563). 

8  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  38. 


254  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

statutes  (i.e.,  the  old  Statutes  of  Labourers)  are  in  divers 
places  too  small  and  not  answerable  to  this  time,  respecting 
the  advancement  of  prices  of  all  things  belonging  to  the 
said  servants  and  labourers,"  and  "  the  said  laws  cannot 
conveniently,  without  the  great  grief  and  burden  of  the 
poor  labourer  and  hired  man,  be  put  into  good  and  due 
execution."  This  sudden  change  of  attitude  on  the  part 
of  the  legislature  is  most  instructive,  and  even  has  its 
humorous  side.  It  shows  a  complete  change  of  tactics  in 
dealing  with  the  working  classes,  but  one  cannot  help 
feeling  some  lurking  doubt  as  to  whether  all  these  honeyed 
words  were  genuine.  After  all,  the  object  of  this  statute 
was  the  same  as  that  of  the  older  ones,  namely,  to  give 
fixity  to  wages  ;  and  it  is  so  unusual  to  find  one  class 
legislating  in  favour  of  another  without  some  adequate 
motive  that  one  cannot  help  thinking  that  there  was 
something  behind  all  this  generosity.  Nor  is  the  motive 
far  to  seek.  It  was  to  place  the  regulation  of  wages  not 
merely  in  the  hands  of  Parliament,  whose  methods  were 
necessarily  slow  and  cumbersome,  but  in  the  hands  of  the 
employers  of  labour,  or  at  least  in  the  hands  of  a  class 
who  would  sympathise  with  employers.  Briefly,  wages 
were  in  future  to  be  fixed  by  the  justices  of  the  peace 
in  quarter  sessions,  and  both  employers  and  employed  were 
bound  to  abide  by  the  assessments  thus  made.  There 
could  be  little  doubt  that  the  employers  would  abide  by 
them  readily  enough,  for  the  local  justices  of  the  peace 
were  sure  to  be  either  employers  themselves  or  drawn  from 
the  same  rank  in  life  ;  and  the  severe  penalties  imposed 
upon  those  who  disobeyed  the  assessment  were  hardly 
likely  to  be  incurred  by  any  except  the  working  classes. 
The  generous  preamble  of  the  Statute  thus  resulted  in  an 
enactment  which,  if  it  could  only  be  enforced,  was  likely  to 
place  the  workmen  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  their  em- 
ployers. Of  course  employers  might  be,  and  no  doubt 
often  were,  men  of  good  and  honest  heart,  and  wishful  to 
do  the  best  for  their  labourers;  but  it  was,  to  say  the 
least,  placing  a  great  temptation  in  their  way  to  give  them 
the  authority  to  fix  a  rate  of  wages  to  which  all  were 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  255 

compelled  by  law  to  adhere.  It  is  true  that  this  assess- 
ment of  wages  was  no  hard  and  fast  rule,  but  was  to 
vary  itself  with  the  fluctuations  in  the  prices  of  provisions  ; 
and  the  inventors  of  this  kindly  scheme  expressed  a  pious 
hope  that  "  it  might  yield  the  hired  person,  both  in  the 
time  of  scarcity  and  in  the  time  of  plenty,  a  convenient 
proportion  of  wages."  But  it  is  to  be  noted  that  they 
added  nothing  to  the  statute  to  make  this  hope  effectual 
in  practice.  All  they  remark  is  that  the  justices  should 
take  into  account,  in  fixing  wages,  the  price  of  food  "  and 
other  circumstances  necessary  to  be  considered  " — a  some- 
what vague  recommendation  ;  and  the  "  hired  person  "  had 
very  little  voice  in  the  matter. 

It  may  be  going  too  far  to  characterise  this  assessment 
scheme — as  one  outspoken  writer  does — as  "  a  conspiracy 
concocted  by  the  law  and  carried  out  by  the  parties  inter- 
ested in  its  success,"  l  and  we  may  give  the  employers  and 
legislators  of  Elizabethan  days  credit  for  the  highest  and 
kindest  intentions  in  a  general  sort  of  way  ;  but  no  one 
except  a  Utopian  optimist  can  shut  his  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  this  ingenious  system  gave  even  the  best  of  employers 
a  direct  interest  in  keeping  the  assessment  of  wages  for 
his  district  as  low  as  possible  ;  and,  human  nature  being 
what  it  is,  no  one  can  be  surprised  if  his  pocket  often 
tended  to  get  the  better  of  his  generosity.  And,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  this  was  of  course  the  case.  It  is  absurd  to 
talk  about  our  forefathers  as  if  they  were  more  than  human  ; 
and  experience  of  human  nature  shows  that  it  is  liable  to 
succumb  to  temptations  far  less  than  those  which  the  Act 
of  Elizabeth  placed  before  its  administrators. 

§   154.   The   Working  of  the  Assessment  System, 

Modern  historians  are  nothing  if  not  controversial,  and 
consequently  no  one  need  be  surprised  to  find  that  this 
Statute  is  alternately  belauded  as  having  been  intended  to 
do  a  real  kindness  to  the  working  classes  and  decried  as  a 
legal  conspiracy  to  do  them  an  injury.  This  aspect  of  the 
question  has  been  already  dealt  with  sufficiently,  but  the  same 

1  Thorold  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  398. 


256  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

controversy  exists  as  to  whether  the  Act  was  ever  properly 
effective.  It  is  amusing  to  find  apologists  for  it  declaring 
that,  after  all,  it  was  never  really  enforced  ; 1  and,  amid 
the  usual  contradictions  of  economic  as  of  other  history,  it  is 
occasionally  hard  to  find  the  truth.  But  it  certainly  seems 
to  be  the  case  that,  in  spite  of  the  continued  increase  in 
the  price  of  the  necessaries  of  life,  the  wages  of  labour 
did  conform  to  the  justices'  assessments,  and  that  these 
assessments  were  too  low  to  give  the  labourer  an  oppor- 
tunity of  really  comfortable  subsistence.2  The  effect  of  the 
Statute  was  not  felt  so  keenly  as  long  as  his  wages  were 
supplemented  by  the  ownership  of  a  small  plot  of  land 
or  by  rights  of  common  ;  but  when  the  enclosures  of  the 
eighteenth  century  took  these  away  from  him,  the  labourer 
was  indeed  badly  off.3  At  any  rate,  if  the  intention  of  the 
Act  of  1563  was  really  to  raise  wages,  it  was  a  failure  in 
this  respect,  for  "  the  machinery  it  created  "  (as  an  historian 
naively  remarks  4  who  takes  a  very  favourable  view  of  it) 
"  had  not  sufficed  to  raise  wages  according  to  the  scarcity 
of  the  times "  in  the  century  following.  This  is  not 
surprising  ;  the  marvel  would  have  been  that  wages  should 
have  risen  when  the  administrators  of  the  Act  were  so 
closely  interested  in  keeping  them  down.  But  there  can 
be  no  dispute  that,  whether  owing  to  the  assessment  or 
not,  wages  steadily  declined  in  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries,  taken  as  a  whole,  as  the  following  tables  5 
will  show,  though,  of  course,  in  so  long  a  time  there  were 
naturally  periods  of  slight  improvement.  The  only 
question  that  arises  is  :  how  was  it  that  for  once  a  Statute 
of  Labourers  achieved  its  object  when  similar  statutes 
had  in  previous  reigns  been  so  ineffectual  ? 

The  reasons  for  this  are  several.  The  labourer  had 
been  already  weakened  (as  we  saw 6)  in  the  reigns  of 
Elizabeth's  father  and  brother  by  the  debasement  of  the 
currency,  the  change  from  tillage  to  sheep- farming,  and  the 

1  Cunningham,  Orowth  of  Industry,  ii.  199,  200. 

a  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  353.  8  Ib. 

4  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  195. 

3  Compiled  from  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  ch.  xiv.  pp.  387-398. 

•  Above,  pp.  206-218. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND 


257 


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258  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

numerous  enclosures  of  land.  These  all  had  their  due  effect 
upon  his  condition.  But  there  were  two  other  causes  of 
equal  power  operating  at  the  same  time.  (1)  The  condi- 
tions of  industry  had  already  largely  changed ;  men  were 
less  bound  to  the  land  than  formerly,  having  been  in  some 
cases  driven  off  it  by  sheep-farms  and  enclosures,  and  in 
others  attracted  from  it  by  the  progress  of  manufacturing 
industries.  There  was,  therefore,  a  much  larger  class  than 
formerly  dependent  entirely  on  wages,1  with  no  land  of  their 
own  to  fall  back  upon,  and  consequently  compelled  to  take 
what  they  could  get  from  the  nearest  employer.  This  was 
in  itself  a  source  of  weakness ;  and  this  weakness  was 
increased  by  another  cause.  (2)  The  old  unions  of  work- 
men had  decayed,  the  craft  gilds  had  become  obsolete  or 
effete,2  and  there  was  nothing  to  bind  the  working-classes 
together  in  self-defence.  The  combined  action8  that  re- 
sulted in  the  Peasants'  Revolt  of  the  fourteenth  century  had 
become  a  thing  so  completely  of  the  past  that  it  had  fallen 
into  oblivion ;  and  not  only  that,  but  the  law  had  now  been 
strained  into  that  iniquitous  doctrine  of  "  conspiracy  "  which 
stamped  all  efforts  of  workmen  to  improve  their  condition  as 
ipso  facto  illegal.  It  was  accounted  as  a  "conspiracy,"  *  and, 
therefore,  a  legal  offence,  for  workmen  to  enter  into  any  asso- 
ciations to  raise,  or  endeavour  to  raise,  the  rate  of  wages ;  and 
workmen  who  entered  into  such  illegal  combinations  were 
punishable  by  fine  or  imprisonment  Meetings  held  for  similar 
purposes  were  punishable  in  the  same  way,  while  every 
inducement  was  given  to  a  workman  to  turn  traitor  and 
betray  his  fellows  by  the  promise  of  indemnity  to  offenders 
who  informed  against  their  associates.  For  centuries  6  this 
tyrannical  measure  disgraced  our  statute  books ;  and  yet 
we  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  legislators,  who  framed 
this  law  and  invented  the  doctrine  of  conspiracy  to  supple- 
ment the  scheme  of  assessment  of  wages,  were  actuated  only 

1  Above,  p.  252.  2  Above,  pp.  189,  207-209,  and  cf.  p.  247. 

8  Above,  p.  163. 

4  Cf.  the  Act  2  and  3  Edward  VI.,  c.  15,  and  the  40  Geo.  HI.,  c.  106. 
The  clauses  18,  19,  and  20  of  the  5  Eliz.,  c.  4,  were  also  strained  to  support 
this  doctrine;  cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  397,  399. 

5  Till  the  6  Geo.  IV.,  c.  129 ;  see  below,  pp.  416-420. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  259 

by  their  kindly  concern  for  the  welfare  of  the  working  man. 
But,  leaving  intentions  and  motives  out  of  the  question,  it 
is  easy  to  see  how  powerfully  the  foregoing  causes  must  have 
operated  in  depressing  the  condition  of  the  labourer,  and 
thus  rendering  it  easy  to  enforce  the  Elizabethan  code  of 
labour  laws. 

§  155.   The  Law  of  Apprenticeship. 

There  are,  however,  certain  clauses  in  this  statute  which 
are  noticeable  as  regulating  the  apprenticeship  system. 
In  agriculture,  any  person  who  had  half  a  ploughland  in 
tillage  might  take  a  boy  to  serve  as  an  apprentice  in  hus- 
bandry till  he  was  twenty-one  years  of  age.  In  crafts,  a 
period  of  seven  years  was  laid  down  as  the  time  of  appren- 
ticeship ;  and  in  order  that  apprenticeship  might  be  a 
reality  in  its  educational  aspect,  every  master  who  had  more 
than  three  apprentices  was  required  to  have  one  journeyman 
for  every  apprentice  over  this  number.  By  this  means 
masters  would  be  prevented  from  getting  work  done  by 
apprentices  which  ought  to  be  done  by  more  qualified  work- 
men. These  regulations  applied  to  the  whole  country,  and 
not  merely,  as  in  mediaeval  times,  to  trades  which  had  gilds. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  that  certain  limitations  were  made 
which  were  evidently  intended  to  benefit  the  agricultural 
interest ;  and  once  again  one  cannot  refrain  from  a  suspicion 
that  the  landed  classes,  who  constituted  the  majority  in 
Parliament,  were  not  actuated  entirely  by  motives  of  pure 
benevolence  to  others.  We  find  that  persons  engaged  in 
agriculture,  or  in  any  trades  connected  therewith  (such  as 
smiths,  wheelwrights,  and  also  the  weavers  of  linen  and 
household  cloth x)  might  take  any  apprentice  they  could 
find.  But  artisans  in  corporate  towns  and  market  towns 
were  more  restricted ;  they  could  not  take  any  one  who  was 
not  the  son  of  a  freeman  of  such  town,  and  the  apprentice 
taken  by  them  was  not  to  be  withdrawn  from  agriculture ; 
while  merchants  and  shopkeepers  in  corporate  towns  were 
restricted  to  the  sons  of  "forty-shilling  freeholders,"  and 

1  See  §23  of  the  5  Eliz.,  c.  4.     This  shows  how  maufactures  and  agricul- 
ture were  often  combined.     See  above,  p.  237,  and  note  there. 


260  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

those  in  market  towns  to  the  sons  of  "sixty-shilling  free- 
holders." It  has  been  said  that  "  as  a  scheme  of  technical 
education  the  regulations  for  artisans  were  admirably  suited 
to  the  needs  of  the  times  " ; 1  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  in 
many  respects  these  regulations  were  beneficial.  But  it  is 
always  a  suspicious  circumstance  when  legislators  belonging 
to  any  particular  class  introduce  restrictions  that  would 
naturally  benefit  the  interests  of  their  own  order ;  and  it  is 
very  obvious  that  what  was  sought  in  these  apprenticeship 
clauses  was  quite  as  much  the  convenience  of  the  agricul- 
tural interest  as  the  promotion  of  a  scheme  of  technical 
education.  Neither  the  landed  gentry  nor  the  agriculturists 
whom  they  represented  need  be  blamed  for  their  action. 
Any  other  class  in  their  position  would  no  doubt  have  done 
the  same.  But  it  is  superfluous,  not  to  say  absurd,  to 
imagine  that  Elizabethan  Parliamentarians  were  actuated, 
any  more  than  other  men,  solely  by  a  desire  for  the  welfare 
of  others. 

It  should  be  added,  when  considering  the  effects  of  the 
apprenticeship  system  as  thus  laid  down  under  Elizabeth, 
that  in  after  years  there  grew  up  a  vast  number  of  trades 
that  were  never  touched  by  this  Act  at  all,  since  it  only 
applied  to  those  actually  in  existence  at  the  time  of  its 
passing.  The  trades  which  arose  in  later  times  were  out- 
side its  operations  altogether,  and  were  usually  known  as 
the  "  incorporated  trades,"  because  they  were  regulated  not 
by  this  Act  but  under  patents  granted  to  those  who  invented 
a  new  manufacture  or  improved  an  old  one. 

§  156.  The  Elizabethan  Poor  Law. 

Closely  connected  with  all  this  industrial  regulation, 
which  we  have  now  briefly  reviewed,  was  the  new  legisla- 
tion rendered  necessary  by  the  steady  increase  of  pauperism 
— a  phenomenon  all  the  more  remarkable  because  it  was 
also  accompanied  by  a  rapid  growth  of  national  wealth. 
The  spectacle  of  Dives  and  Lazarus  existing  side  by  side  is 
in  our  own  day  so  common  as  to  excite  little  remark  ;  and 
the  poor-rate  is  regarded  with  the  same  equanimity — or 
1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  41. 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  261 

hopelessness — as  the  charges  for  water  or  police.  But 
it  was  still  of  sufficient  novelty  in  the  reigns  of  Henry 
VIII.  and  his  children  to  cause  English  legislators  con- 
siderable uneasiness.  We  have  already  seen  (pp.  195,  205) 
how  it  was  dealt  with  in  former  days,  and  later,  in  the  last 
year1  of  Edward  VI.,  two  collectors  were  appointed  in  every 
parish,  whose  business  it  was  to  obtain  from  every  person  of 
substance  a  promise  of  alms  for  the  relief  of  the  poor,  to 
enter  such  promises  in  a  book  and  collect  the  money,  and 
to  relieve  the  poor  with  it.  In  the  beginning  of  Elizabeth's 
reign  it  was  found  that  further  pressure  was  needed  to  make 
people  give,  and  therefore  in  1563  another  Act2  was  passed, 
by  which  a  person  who  was  unwilling  to  contribute  to  the  re- 
lief of  the  poor,  and  who  would  not  be  affected  even  by  the 
exhortations  of  his  bishop,  had  to  appear  before  the  Justices 
of  the  Quarter  Sessions  and  submit  to  a  tax  or  assessment 
imposed  upon  him  by  them,  or  be  thrown  into  prison.  The 
provision  for  the  relief  of  the  poor  was,  in  fact,  altogether 
changing  in  character.  It  was  no  longer  a  free  act  of 
Christian  charity,  but  a  compulsory  contribution  towards  the 
mitigation  of  a  social  evil,  a  contribution  of  the  same  nature 
as  the  nineteenth  century  poor-rate.  There  was  now  "  only 
a  step  from  the  process  under  which  a  reluctant  subscriber 
to  the  poor  law  was  assessed  by  the  Justices,  and  imprisoned 
on  refusal,  to  a  general  assessment  of  all  property."  8  This 
step  was  taken  by  the  celebrated  Poor  Law  of  Elizabeth 4  in 
1601.  This  famous  and  long-lived6  Act  prescribed  the 
levy  of  a  compulsory  poor-rate  in  every  parish,  designated 
the  kind  of  property  on  which  the  rate  was  to  be  levied,  and 
inflicted  penalties  on  those  who  disobeyed  its  provisions. 
Work  was  to  be  provided  for  those  who  would  or  could  work, 
and  relief  for  those  who  could  not ;  poor  children  were  to 
be  trained  to  some  craft ;  and  the  idle  were  to  be  punished. 
Such  was  the  remarkable  Act  with  which,  as  has  been  so 
justly  pointed  out,  the  history  of  English  labour  has  been 

'By  the  5  and  6  Ed.  VI.,  c.  2.  »  The  fi  Eliz. ,  c.  3. 

3  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  420.  *  The  43  Elit.,  o.  3. 

8  It  was  only  meant,  however,  at  first  to  be  temporary,  but  it  WM 
renewed  in  the  next  Parliament,  and  at  last  made  permanent  by  th« 
16  Charles  L,  c.  4. 


262  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

ever  since  its  enactment  most  intimately  associated.1  At 
this  space  of  time  it  is  hard  to  look  upon  it  with  eyes 
unprejudiced,  either  favourably  or  unfavourably  ;  but  possibly 
the  best  comment  upon  it  has  been  supplied  by  its  own 
subsequent  history,  which  has  never  been  able  to  record  its 
success.  One  of  its  greatest  defects  has  been  the  lack  of 
any  adequate  system  of  providing  employment  for  the  poor, 
and  this  has  been  the  weak  point  of  the  whole  English 
Poor-Law  code.  Work  was  indeed  meant  to  be  provided 
by  this  Act  of  1601,  but  its  local  administrators  never  set 
themselves  seriously  to  raise  a  fund  and  find  such  work  for 
the  unemployed  z  by  providing  a  stock  of  hemp,  wool,  iron, 
and  other  materials.3  The  training  of  children  as  parish 
apprentices  led  to  their  ill-treatment,4  and  the  system  of 
providing  relief  from  the  rates  developed  into  one  of  the 
most  foolish  of  abuses.5  With  these  points  we  shall  deal 
later,  as  their  full  effect  becomes  more  visible  ;  but  there 
is  one  which  requires  notice  before  we  go  any  further. 

In  the  third  clause  of  this  historic  Act  there  is  a  pro- 
vision, that  if  a  parish  is  not  rich  enough  to  maintain  its 
own  poor  entirely,  the  deficiency,  if  any,  in  the  rates  shall 
be  supplemented  from  the  rest  of  the  hundred.6  This 
seems  at  first  sight  a  reasonable  provision,  and  was  prob- 
ably inserted  by  the  framers  of  the  Act  as  requisite  in 
view  of  a  very  possible  contingency.  It  was  not  acted 
upon  at  first  to  any  great  extent,7  but  subsequently  it 
became  a  favourite  instrument  of  employers  of  labour  for 
reducing  wages,  first  by  lowering  them  in  their  own  parish 
to  such  a  point  that  it  was  necessary  to  give  the  labourer 
an  enormous  amount  of  relief  out  of  the  rates,  and  then  by 
throwing  the  burden  of  this  relief  upon  surrounding 
parishes.8  The  use  thus  made  of  this  clause  in  after 
years  was  certainly  ingenious,  for  a  large  proportion  of  a 
labourer's  wages  would  thus  come  out  of  the  pockets  of  the 
general  public,  while  a  corresponding  saving  was  effected 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  421.     For  various  views  see  Cunningham, 
Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  58-61,  and  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  p.  58. 

2  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  61. 

3  Cf.  the  18  Eliz.,  c.  3.      «  See  below,  p.  388.  s  Below,  pp.  412-414. 
8  43  Eliz.,  c.  3,  §  3.            1  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  p.  58.  8  Below,  p.  412. 


DISTRIBUTION 
OF     WEALTH     IN 

ENGLAND 


LEICESTER  f 


«TUM> 


'HERTFORD.'    ESSEX 


Bristol     Channel 


£     U    S    S  £  x 


A    & 


6 


Scale  of  English  Miles 

0    1O   20  SO   40  50  75 1OO 


WEALTH    IN    ENGLAND    IN    1636. 

This  Map  ts  based  on  the  well-known   assessment   for   ship-money,,  and   gives  the   assessment 
per  square  mile.    It  should  be  compared  with  that  opposite  page  196. 

1.     Counties  assessed  at  £6  to  £7  per  square  mile        ......        Dark  Brown. 


£5  to  £6 
£4  to  £5 
£3  to  £4 
£2  to  £3 
under  £2 


......  Dark  Green. 

......  Dark  Red. 

...        ...  Light  Brown. 

......  Light  Red. 

......  Light  Green 


ELIZABETHAN  ENGLAND  263 

by  his  employer.  The  ingenuity  of  the  arrangement  is 
perhaps  more  conspicuous  than  its  honesty :  of  that  my 
readers  can  judge  for  themselves  ;  but  it  merely  shows,  as 
has  been  remarked  before,  that  human  nature  can  rarely 
resist  a  temptation  which  is  addressed  to  its  pocket.  The 
action  of  this  apparently  innocent  clause  is  seen  more 
clearly  in  the  eighteenth  century,1  but  it  is  well  to  notice 
it  here,  in  its  place,  as  a  weak  spot  in  an  Act  that  was 
never  particularly  strong. 

§   157.  Population. 

We  may  now  conclude  our  survey  of  Elizabethan 
England  with  a  brief  notice  of  the  then  existing  number 
of  inhabitants.  The  marked  improvement  in  agriculture 
and  the  increase  of  wealth  brought  with  them,  at  the  close 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  an  equally  marked  increase  of 
population.  We  saw  that  at  the  time  of  Domesday  the 
population  of  England  was  under  two  millions.2  When 
the  poll-tax  of  1377  was  levied,  in  the  last  year  of 
Edward  III.'s  reign,  it  had  not  much  increased,  being  at 
most  not  more  than  two  and  a  quarter  or  two  and  a  half 
millions,  according  to  careful  calculations  based  upon  the 
returns  of  this  tax.8  But  by  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign  it 
had  risen  rapidly  to  five  million  souls,4  but  probably  did  not 
increase  so  quickly  during  the  next  hundred  and  fifty  years. 
The  bulk  of  the  population  was  still  in  the  southern  half  of 
the  country,6  although  the  north  was  now  becoming  more 
prosperous,  owing  to  the  extension  of  manufactures.  It  will 
be  seen  that  England  was  by  no  means  overcrowded,  and  yet 
people  were  found  who  complained  of  the  increase  of  popu- 
lation. William  Harrison,6  in  his  Description  of  England, 
remarks  :  "  Some  also  do  grudge  at  the  great  increase  of 

1B«low,  pp.  412-414.  'Above,  pp.  66,  106. 

*  Topham,  in  Archaeoloyia,  vii.  337. 

4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  463,  says  still  only  2}  millions,  but  if  so  it  rose 
very  rapidly  to  5$  millions  by  1688.     Bang,  in  Davenant's  Works,  ii.  184. 

5  This  may  be  easily  seen  in  the  assessment  made  later  by  Charles  I.  for 
ship-money  in  1636.    See  also  Rogers'  valuable  chapter  vii.  on  The  distribu- 
tion of  wealth  in  England  at  different  epochs  in  his  Economic  Interpretation 
o/ History,  p.  138  sqq.  ;  and  in  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  66-125. 

•Page  125  (Camelot  series  edition)  ;  Bk.  III.,  ch.  5,  of  1577  edn. 


264  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

people  in  these  days,  thinking  a  necessary  brood  of  cattle 
far  better  than  a  superfluous  augmentation  of  mankind. 
But,"  he  adds,  severely,  "  I  can  liken  such  men  best  unto 
the  Pope  or  the  Devil,"  and  adds  that  in  case  of  invasion 
they  will  find  "  that  a  wall  of  men  is  far  better  than  stacks 
of  corn  and  bags  of  money."  Even  without  the  fear  of 
invasion  before  our  eyes,  it  is  well  for  us  to-day  not  to 
forget  this  latter  sentence  in  the  modern,  international  race 
for  wealth. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

PROGRESS    OF    AGRICULTURE    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    AND 
EIGHTEENTH    CENTURIES 

§  158.  Rtewm.6  of  Progress  since  Thirteenth  Century. 

IT  will  be  remembered  that  great  agricultural  changes 
had  taken  place  since  Henry  III.'s  reign.  For  a  century 
or  so  after  his  death  (1272)  the  landowner  was  also  a 
cultivator,  living  upon  his  land  and  owning  a  large  amount 
of  capital  in  the  form  of  stock,  which  he  let  out  under  the 
stock  and  land  lease  system.1  But  after  the  Great  Plague 
(134-8)  this  method  of  cultivation  by  capitalist  landowners 
largely  ceased,  except  in  the  case  of  sheep-farming;  the 
landowner  became  generally  a  mere  rent  receiver;  and 
agriculture  consequently  suffered  to  some  extent.  Marling, 
for  instance,  fell  into  disuse,  and  the  breed  of  sheep,  it  is 
said,  deteriorated  somewhat.2  The  great  feature  of  the 
change  was  the  transformation  of  large  tracts  of  arable  land 
into  pasture  for  sheep,  and  the  growth  of  enclosures  for  the 
sake  of  the  same  animal.  This  process,  however,  seems  to 
have  ceased  to  some  extent  about  the  last  decade  of  the  six- 
teenth century,8  and  enclosures  were  afterwards  made,  as 
we  shall  see,  for  another  reason.  The  landlords,  meanwhile, 
rapidly  proceeded  to  raise  their  rents,  till,  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  extortionate  renting  became  so  common  that  Bishop 
Latimer,4  and  Fitzherbert,  the  author  of  the  useful  work  on 

1  Above,  pp.  114,  186. 

2  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  442,   who  quotes  Fitzherbert;  and  Hi*. 
Agrie.,  v.  52. 

8  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  52  and  180.  He  gives  1592  as 
about  the  date  of  cessation,  with  a  slight  increase  of  enclosures  again 
About  1597  (Spedding,  Lettert  and  Life  of  Bacon,  i.  158),  but  afterwards 
enclosures  for  sheep  practically  stopped. 

*  Latimer't  Sermons  (Parker  Society),  p.  99. 


266  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

surveying,1  complained  about  it  both  in  sermons  and  other 
writings.  For  all  these  reasons  English  agriculture  did  not 
improve  very  materially  between  the  days  of  Henry  III.  and 
of  Elizabeth.  But  in  this  queen's  reign,  as  we  saw,  several 
improvements  were  made  under  the  influence  of  foreign 
refugees.  For  the  inhabitants  of  the  Low  Countries  and 
Holland  have  been  our  pioneers  not  only  in  commerce  and 
finance,  but  in  agriculture  also.*  It  was  these  people  who 
now  introduced  into  England  the  cultivation  of  winter  roots  s 
(the  want  of  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  greatly  embar- 
rassed the  English  farmer  in  the  mediaeval  winter),  and  in 
the  eighteenth  century  that  of  artificial  grasses.4  The  intro- 
duction of  hops  also  was  of  great  importanca5 

§  159.  Progress  in  James  L'a  Reign.     Influence  of 

Landlords. 

Of  course  the  greatest  industrial  progress  of  this  period 
was  made  in  the  direction  of  foreign  trade,  and  in  James's 
reign  progress  in  agriculture  was  slow  as  compared  with  that 
in  commerce,  but  it  was  substantial — substantial  enough, 
at  any  rate,  for  the  landlords  to  exact  an  increased  competi- 
tive rent,  as  we  know  from  Norden's  work,  The  Surveyor's 
Dialogue  (1607).6  Norden  also  notes7  that  tenants  were 
eager  to  take  land  even  at  high  rents,  and  this  shows  that 
they  expected  to  make  good  profits.  Whether  they  always 
made  them  is  another  question.  But  this  development  of 
competitive,  as  contrasted  with  the  old  customary,  rents  is 
certainly  worthy  of  attention.  It  was,  however,  complained 
that  the  action  of  the  landlords  tended  to  discourage  pro- 
gress, for  when  a  tenant  wished  to  renew  a  lease  he  was 
threatened  with  dispossession  if  he  did  not  pay  an  increased 
rent  for  the  very  improvements  he  had  made  himself.8 

1  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  41.  *  Hartiib's  Legacy,  p.  54,  and  passim. 

3  Weston,  Discourse  of  Husbandrie  uted  in  Brabant  (1652),  p.  25  ;  Wor- 
lidge,  Systema  Agriculture,  p.  46 ;  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  453. 

*  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  453.  8  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  57. 

9  Dialogue,  p.  9. 

7  Ib.  Norden,  by  the  way,  is  corroborated  by  Best,  author  of  Rural 
Economy  in  Yorkshire  in  1641,  p.  129.  Lands  (he  says)  which  had  let 
formerly  at  2s.,  then  at  2s.  6d.,  and  again  at  3s.,  had  now  risen  to  thrice  as 
much.  *  See  the  Preface  to  Hartlib's  Legacy,  probably  by  Dymock. 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  267 

Still,  from  the  facts  given  by  Norden,  and  also  by  another 
writer — Markham,  the  author  of  The  English  Husba/ndman 
(1613) — it  is  evident  that  there  was  considerable  improve- 
ment, development,  and  variety  now  shown  in  English 
agriculture.1  Arable  farming  was  prosecuted  with  increased 
energy,2  and  both  to  farmers  as  well  as  to  merchants  the 
seventeenth  century  brought  increased  prosperity.5  The 
special,  characteristic  feature  of  the  seventeenth  century  is 
the  utilisation  of  the  fallow  for  roots,4  though  these  had 
been  known  in  gardens  in  the  previous  century.5  The  most 
fertile  land  was  to  be  found  in  Huntingdon,  Bedford,  and 
Cambridge  shires,  the  next  best  being  in  Northampton, 
Kent,  Essex,  Berkshire,  and  Hertfordshire.*  Land  was  still 
largely  cultivated  in  common  fields,7  and  was,  of  course, 
much  subdivided.  But  the  practice  was  now  increasing  of 
making  enclosures,  not  as  before,  for  the  sake  of  sheep- 
farming,  but  in  order  to  carry  on  an  improved  method  of 
tillage.8  It  was  recommended  by  agricultural  writers,9  and 
their  recommendations  seem  to  have  been  widely  adopted, 
though  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  many  of  those  who 
enclosed  land  had  personally  read  their  books,  for  agricul- 
ture owes  but  little  to  literature.  The  enclosures  thus  made 
for  tillage  certainly  conduced  to  the  improvement  of  agri- 
culture, though  in  many  cases  it  is  to  be  feared  that  the 
interests  of  those  who  had  a  right  to  common  lands  were 
disregarded,  and  both  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  witnessed  steady  progress. 

§  160.    Writers  on  Agriculture.     Improvements.     Game. 

One  noticeable  improvement  is  the  attention  now  paid  to 
the  various  kinds  of  manures,10  on  which  subject  Markham 

1  See  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  pp.  40  to  65. 

3  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  185. 

»  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  459.  *  Ib.,  468.  *  Above,  p.  249. 

8  Msrkham,  quoted  by  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  55. 

7  It  remained  so  in  numerous  instances  till  after  the  middle  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century.     Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  39. 

8  Cunningham,  Orowth  of  Industry,  ii.  181. 

'HartliVs  Legacy,  p.  54;  Worlidge,  System*,  p.  10;  Taylor,  Common 
Good,  p.  13. 

M  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  185 ;  Rogers,  Hi*.  Agrit.,  T.  fi2. 


268  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

was  the  first  to  write  specially,  though  there  are  several 
other  authors  who  have  dealt  with  it.1  The  fact  that 
agriculture  was  now  made  the  topic  of  various  treatises 
proves  that  important  development  was  taking  place.  Be- 
sides the  works  already  mentioned,  we  have  the  Systema 
Agricuiturce  by  Worlidge,  a  farmer  of  Hampshire,  the  second 
edition  of  which  appeared  in  1675.  He  is  a  strong  advo- 
cate of  enclosures,  as  against  the  old  common  field  system, 
on  the  plea  that  the  former  is  more  conducive  to  high  farm- 
ing ;  but  he  also  is  in  favour  of  small  holdings  thus  enclosed.2 
Though  at  first  local  and  somewhat  spasmodic,  and  hindered 
no  doubt  by  uncertainty  of  tenure3  and  by  the  landlord's 
power  of  appropriating  the  results  of  increased  skill  on  the 
part  of  the  tenant,  under  the  head  of  "  indestructible  powers 
of  the  soil,"  yet  the  progress  made  was  sufficient  to  increase 
very  largely  the  population  of  England,4  an  increase  aided 
also  by  the  growth  of  manufactures.  A  curious  fact  in  the 
agriculture  of  the  seventeenth  century  may  be  here  men- 
tioned in  passing — that  is,  the  existence  of  a  very  large 
amount  of  waste  land,  and  the  use  made  of  it  for  purposes 
of  breeding  game.5  At  that  time  it  is  evident  that  killing 
game  was  not  the  exclusive  right  of  the  landowners,  but 
was  a  common  privilege.  Large  quantities  of  game  were 
sold,  and  at  a  cheap  price,  and  "  fowling "  must  evidently 
have  been  an  important  item  in  the  farmer's  and  labourer's 
means  of  livelihood. 

§  161.  Drainage  of  the  Fens. 

A  most  important  feature  in  the  development  of  agri- 
culture in  the  Eastern  counties  was  the  drainage  of  the 
fens — i.e.,  all  that  large  district  which  extends  inward  from 
the  Wash  into  the  counties  of  Lincoln,  Cambridge,  North- 
ampton, Huntingdon,  Norfolk,  and  Suffolk.  This  district 

1  Blith,   Husbandry,   60 ;  Plato,   Jewel   House,  21.      For  an  excellent 
account  of  these  writers  on  agriculture  see  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  pp.  40 
to  65,  frequently  copied  by  other  authors. 

2  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  62. 

3  Plattes,  essay  on  Husbandry,  quoted  by  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  56. 

4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  463;  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  64. 

5  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  27. 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  269 

had  been  partly  reclaimed  by  the  Romans,  and  had  been 
for  a  time  a  fertile  country.1  But  in  the  time  of  the 
Domesday  Book  it  was  once  again  a  mere  marsh,  owing  to 
incursions  of  the  sea,  which  the  English  at  that  time  had 
not  the  ability  to  prevent.  Although  even  in  1436,  and 
subsequently,  partial  attempts  had  been  made  to  reclaim 
this  vast  area,  the  first  effectual  effort  was  begun  only  in 
1634,  by  the  Earl  of  Bedford,  who  received  95,000  acres  of 
the  reclaimed  land  as  a  reward  for  his  undertaking.2  The 
contract  was  fulfilled  under  the  superintendence  of  the 
engineer  Vermuyden,  a  Dutchman,  in  1649,  and  a  corpora- 
tion was  formed  to  manage  the  "  Bedford  level,"  as  it  was 
now  called,  in  1688.  The  reclaiming  of  so  much  land 
naturally  increased  the  prosperity  of  the  counties  in  which 
it  stood,  and  their  agriculture  flourished  considerably  in 
consequence,  Bedfordshire  for  instance  being  now  the  most 
exclusively  agricultural  county  in  the  kingdom.  Similar 
operations  were  effected  in  Hatfield  Chase.8 

§  162.  Else  of  Price  of  Corn  and  of  Rent. 
The  price  of  corn,  meanwhile,  was  now  steadily  rising. 
From  1401  to  1540 — -i.e.,  before  the  rise  in  prices  and  the 
debasements  of  the  coinage — the  average  price  had  been  a 
farthing  under  six  shillings  per  quarter  ; 4  after  prices  had 
recovered  from  their  inflation,  and  settled  down  to  a  general 
average  once  more,  taking  the  price  from  1603  to  1702,. 
corn  was  forty-one  shillings  per  quarter.6  The  average 
produce  had  apparently  declined,  or,  at  any  rate,  had 
not  increased  since  the  fifteenth  and  before  the  im- 
provements of  the  seventeenth  century.  In  the  former 
period  it  was  about  twelve  bushels  per  acre,6  and  in 

1  See  article  on  Bedford  Level  in  Chambers'  Encyclopaedia  (ed.  1888), 
and  Denton,  Fifteenth  Century,  pp.  140-141 ;   also  Smiles,  Livet  of  the 
Engineers,  Vol.  I. ,  p.  10. 

2  See  more  fully  Gardiner,  History  oj  England,  oh.  Ixxxiv.,  Vol.  VIII., 
p.  295.     As  the  rent  was,  after  the  draining,  about  30s.  an  acre,  the  earl's 
reward  was  very  substantial. 

8  Ib.,  Vol.  VIII.  p.  292.  This  was  in  1626,  and  Vermuyden  was  knighted 
for  his  efforts  (1629) ;  cf.  Smiles,  Lives  of  the  Engineers,  Vol.  I.,  for  Life 
and  Works  of  Vermuyden.  4  Rogers,  Hist.  Agrie.,  iv.  292. 

8  Ib.,  v.  276.  '  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.,  p,  63. 


270  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  fourteenth  century  eleven  bushels;1  but  Gregory  King, 
writing  in  the  seventeenth  century,  only  gives  ten  or 
eleven  bushels  as  the  average  of  his  time.2  His  estimate, 
however,  is  doubted.8  At  the  same  time,  rent  had  risen 
from  the  sixpence  per  acre  of  the  fifteenth  century  to  four 
shillings,4  according  to  Professor  Rogers,6  or  even  5s.  6d., 
according  to  King,6  who  says  the  gains  of  the  farmer  of  his 
time  were  very  small,  and  that  rents  were  more  than  doubled 
between  1600  and  1699.  We  will  reserve  the  topic  of 
the  rise  of  rent,  however,  for  a  separate  section,  and  keep 
to  the  agricultural  developments  of  the  period. 

§  163.  Special  Features  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 
Popularity  of  Agriculture. 

As  the  use  of  winter  roots  had  been  the  special  feature 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  so  the  feature  of  the  eighteenth 
was  the  extension  of  artificial  pasture  and  the  increased  use 
of  clover,  sainfoin,  and  rye-grass  ; 7  not,  of  course,  that  these 
had  been  hitherto  unknown,  but  now  their  seeds  were 
regularly  bought  and  used  by  any  farmer  who  knew  his 
business.  At  first,  like  all  other  processes  of  agriculture, 
the  development  was  very  slow  and  gradual,  but  it  went  on 
steadily  nevertheless.  A  great  stimulus  to  progress  was  given 
by  the  fact  that  the  English  gentlemen  of  the  eighteenth 
century  developed  quite  a  passion  for  agriculture  as  a  hobby, 
and  it  became  a  fashionable  pursuit  for  all  people  of  any 
means,  citizens  and  professional  men  joining  in  it  as  a  kind 
of  bye-industry,  in  addition  to  the  farmers  and  landowners, 
who  made  it  their  business.8  Arthur  Young,  the  great  agri- 
cultural writer  of  this  century,  declares  that  "  the  farming 
tribe  is  now  made  up  of  all  classes,  from  a  duke  to  an 
apprentice."  It  should  also  be  added  that  in  the  eighteenth 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  476  and  442. 

2  In  Davenant's  Works,  ii.  217.  3  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  783. 
4  Taylor,  the  author  of  the  Common  Good  (1652),  gives  (p.  15)  3s.  4<L 

per  acre  as  a  typical  rent  in  his  time. 
6  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  92. 

6  Quoted  in  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  92,  who  gives  4s.  IJd.  as  the  average 
rental  of  the  Belvoir  estate. 

7  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  468.  8  Ib.,  p.  470. 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  271 

century  more  capital  was  being  applied  to  the  pursuit 
of  agriculture.  The  wealth  gained  by  the  commercial 
progress  of  the  day  was  largely  put  into  the  land,  and  the 
great  revolution  that  now  took  place  in  English  agriculture 
was  carried  on  under  the  influence  of  men  of  wealth.1  But 
two  important  mistakes  were  made  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  they  have  not  ceased  to  exist  in  the  nineteenth,  in- 
creasing very  largely  the  distress  under  which  English 
agriculture  has  for  some  time  (1895)  been  labouring.  They 
are  the  mistakes  of  occupying  too  much  land  with  insufficient 
capital,  and  of  not  keeping  regular  and  detailed  accounts.2 
Improvements  also  were  not  universal,  but  were  often  con- 
fined, at  least  at  first,  to  scattered  parts  of  the  country.* 
Progress  was  to  begin  with  (say  from  I700tol760)4  rather 
slow,  but  afterwards  became  very  rapid,  and  wealthy  land- 
owners made  great  efforts  to  improve  their  estates,  succeeding 
also  thereby  in  raising  their  rents  and  increasing  their  profits.4 
They  thus  became  in  a  way  the  pioneers  of  agricultural  pro- 
gress, the  principal  result  of  their  efforts  being  seen  in  the  in- 
creased number  and  quality  of  the  stock  now  kept  on  farms. 

§  164.  Improvements  of  Cattle,  and  in  the  Productiveness 
of  Land.     Statistics. 

The  extended  cultivation  of  winter  roots,  clover,  and 
other  grasses  naturally  made  it  far  easier  for  the  farmer  to 
feed  his  animals  in  the  winter ;  and  the  improvement  in 
stock  followed  closely  upon  the  improvement  in  fodder.8 
The  abundance  of  stock,  too,  had  again  a  beneficial  result 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  362. 

8  Arthur  Young,  quoted  in  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  471. 

*  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  41.  *  Ib. ,  p.  45. 

8  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  363,  364,  following  Young,  praises 
these  wealthy  landowners  for  their  efforts,  and  expresses  surprise  that 
later  writers  have  attacked  such  men  for  raising  rents  and  for  other  reasons. 
No  doubt  the  landowners  are  entitled  to  every  praise  for  their  spirited 
efforts,  but  to  call  a  man  (as  Young  practically  does)  the  greatest  of 
patriots  for  following  the  obvious  course  of  enlightened  self-interest  is 
little  less  than  absurd.  A  landlord  who  makes  a  profit  out  of  his  land  by 
improvements  in  husbandry  deserves  such  a  title  as  little,  or  as  much,  as  a 
manufacturer  who  derives  a  handsome  profit  from  a  new  machine. 

•Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  475. 


272  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

in  the  production  of  increased  quantities  of  manure,  and 
the  utilisation  of  fertilisers  was  more  scientifically  devel- 
oped. The  useful,  though  costly,  process  of  marling  was 
again  revived,  and  was  advocated  by  Arthur  Young  ;  soils 
were  also  treated  with  clay,  chalk,  or  lime.1  So  great  was 
the  improvement  thus  made,  that  the  productiveness  of 
land  in  the  eighteenth  century  rose  to  four  times  that  of 
the  thirteenth  century,  when  five  bushels  or  eight  bushels 
of  corn  per  acre  was  the  average.2  Stock,  also,  was 
similarly  improved  ;  an  eighteenth  century  fatted  ox  often 
weighed  over  800  Ibs.,3  while  hitherto,  from  the  fourteenth 
to  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  weight  had  not 
been  usually  much  above  400  Ibs.  The  weight  of  the 
fleece  of  sheep  had  also  increased  quite  four  times.4  Popu- 
lation being  even  then  small,  a  considerable  quantity  of 
corn  was  exported,  the  British  farmer  being  also  protected 
from  foreign  competition  by  the  corn  laws  (made  in  Charles 
II. 's  reign),5  forbidding  importation  of  corn,  except  when  it 
rose  to  famine  prices.  Young 6  estimated  the  cultivated 
acreage  of  the  country  at  32,000,000  acres,  arable  and  pas- 
ture being  in  equal  proportions,  whereas  King  7  had  put  it  at 
only  22,000,000  in  the  seventeenth  century  ;  its  value  (at 
thirty-three  and  one-half  years'  purchase)  was,  says  Young, 
£536,000,000.  The  value  of  stock  he  places  at  nearly 
£110,000,000,  and  estimates  the  wheat  and  rye  crop  at 
over  9,000,000  quarters  per  annum,  barley  at  11,500,000 
quarters,  and  oats  at  10,250,000  quarters.  The  rent  of  land 
had  risen  in  Young's  time  to  nearly  ten  shillings  an  acre.8 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  476. 

2/Z».,  477  ;  cf.  also  Young,  who  gives  25  bushels  an  acre  (in  1770),  while 
in  France  it  was  only  18  bushels.  Travels  in  France,  i.  354. 

3  Cf.  Eden,  State  of  the  Poor,  i.  334 ;  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution, 
44,  but  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  477,  gives  1200  Ibs.  *Ib.,  p.  477. 

5  See  the  22  Charles  II.,  c.  13,  by  which  a  duty  of  16s.  a  qr.  was  placed 
on  wheat  when  at  or  below  53s.  4d. ,  and  a  duty  of  8s.  when  it  was  between 
53s.  4d.  and  80s.  a  qr.      Other  kinds  of  grain  were  similarly  treated. 
We  have  seen  that  the  average  price  of  wheat  at  this  time  was  41s.  a  qr.  i 
hence  the  effect  of  this  law  may  be  easily  perceived. 

6  Northern  Tour,  iv.  340-341,  butc/.  Eastern  Tmir,  iv.  455. 

7  Observations  upon  the  State  and  Condition  of  England,  1696  ;  printed  in 
Chalmers'  Estimate,  p.  52. 

8  Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  477  j  but  also  cf.  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  29. 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  273 

§165.  Survivals  of  Primitive  Cidture.     Common  Fields. 

With  all  these  improvements,  however,  rural  England, 
even  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
retained  in  its  husbandry  many  traces  of  a  more  primitive 
state  of  things.  Again  and  again  the  permanence  of 
ancient  institutions  and  methods  surprises  us,  here  as 
elsewhere,  just  as  Arthur  Young  was  surprised  in  his  tours 
through  his  own  country.  Thus  at  Boynton  (Yorks)  Young 
found  remains  of  extensive  culture  ; 1  in  other  cases  the 
old  two-field  or  three-field  system  was  carried  on  ;  as,  for 
instance,  near  Ecclesfield  in  Hallamshire,  and  at  Beverley  in 
Yorkshire.2  Throughout  considerable  districts,  in  fact,  the 
agrarian  system  of  the  middle  ages  still  remained  in  force  ;8 
and  naturally,  compared  with  the  newer  methods  of  agri- 
culture, it  yielded  but  poor  results.  "  Never,"  says  Arthur 
Young,  "  were  more  miserable  crops  seen  than  the  spring 
ones  in  the  common  fields  ;  absolutely  beneath  contempt"  * 
The  causes  of  this  backward  state  of  things  were  many, 
but  all  naturally  arose  from  the  difficulties  inherent  in  the 
common  field  system  when  some  of  those  who  used  it  had 
surpassed  their  co-workers  in  agricultural  progress.5  For 
one  thing  the  same  course  of  crops  was  nearly  always 
necessary,  and  no  proper  rotation  was  feasible,  the  only 
possible  alteration  being  to  vary  the  proportions  of  different 
white-straw  crops.6 

A  man  of  enterprise  was  therefore  greatly  hindered  ;  for 
if  he  worked  with  his  neighbours  in  these  open  fields  he 
was  compelled  to  follow  a  traditional  but  unprogressive 
course  of  husbandry  against  his  better  judgment.  Then, 
again,  much  time  was  lost  by  labourers  and  cattle  travel- 
ling to  many  dispersed  pieces  of  land  from  one  end  of 
the  parish  to  another.7  There  were  continuous  quarrels 
among  neighbours  about  rights  of  pasture  in  the  meadows, 

*  Northern  Tour,  ii.  7.  '•«>.,  ii.  1,  cf.  also  i.  126. 

8  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  39. 
4  Southern  Tour,  p.  384  (ed.  1772). 

6Cf.  Toynbee,  Indust.  Revolution,  p.  40,  and  Cunningham,  Growth  of 
Industry,  ii.  p.  370. 

6  Toynbee,  Indust.  Revolution,  p.  40. 

7  Young,  View  of  the  Agriculture  of  Oxfordshire,  p.  100. 

S 


274  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

and  in  the  stubbles  after  the  harvest ;  and  the  question  of 
boundaries  was  another  fruitful  source  of  dispute;  for  we 
are  told  that  in  some  common  fields  there  were  no  "  baulks," 
or  strips  of  unused  land  to  divide  the  holdings,  and  men 
would  plough  by  night  to  steal  a  furrow  from  their  neigh- 
bours.1 Hence  it  is  not  surprising  that  those  who  followed 
the  new  agriculture  also  encouraged  the  practice  of 
enclosures.  The  old  methods  had  to  give  way  to  the 
new,  and  these  were  hardly  possible  on  unenclosed  land  ; 
and  therefore  we  note,  together  with  the  progress  of  agri- 
culture, a  simultaneous  increase  in  the  amount  of  land 
enclosed. 

§  166.    Great  Increase  of  Enclosures. 

The  abolition  of  the  old  system  was  necessary,  but  the 
manner  in  which  it  was  carried  out  was  often  disastrous.  The 
enclosures  made  by  the  landowners  were  frequently  carried 
on  with  little  regard  to  the  interests  of  the  smaller  tenants 
and  freeholders,  who,  in  fact,  suffered  greatly  ;  2  and  in  the 
present  age  English  agriculture  is,  in  a  large  measure,  still 
feeling  the  subsequent  effects  of  this  change,  especially  in 
regard  to  the  size  of  holdings,  while  many  people  are  ad- 
vocating a  partial  return  to  small  farms,  cultivated,  how- 
ever, with  the  improved  experience  given  by  modern 
agricultural  progress.  Certainly  this  was  not  the  first 
occasion  on  which  the  landowners  had  made  enclosures  and 
encroached  upon  the  common  lands  of  their  poorer  neigh- 
bours, and  not  merely  upon  the  waste ;  3  but  the  rapidity 
and  boldness  of  the  enclosing  operations  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  far  surpassed  anything  in  previous 

1  Young,  View  of  the  Agriculture  of  Oxfordshire,  p.  239 ;  Toynbee,  Indust. 
Rev.,  p.  40. 

2  "Though  we  cannot  pretend  to  estimate  the  extent  of  the  evil,  there 
is  no  reason  to  doubt  its  reality.     Enclosure  was  carried  on  by  means  of 
private  bills ;  these  were  passed  through  Parliament  without  sufficient 
inquiry  and  when  many  of  the   inhabitants  were  quite  unaware  of  the 
impending  change  or  powerless  to   resist  it."     Cunningham,  Growth  of 
Industry,  ii.  486. 

3  Arthur  Young  found  that  out  of  37  parishes  which  had  been  enclosed 
there  were  only  12  in  which  the  labourers  had  not  been  injured.     Annals 
oj  Agriculture,  xxxvi.  513, 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  275 

times.  Between  1710  and  1760,  for  instance,  only 
334,974  acres  were  enclosed;1  but  between  1760  and 
1843  the  number  rose  to  7,000,000.* 

§  167.  Benefits  of  Enclosures  as  Compared  with  the  Old 
Common  Fields. 

The  benefits  of  the  enclosure  system  were,  however,  un- 
mistakable, for  the  cultivation  of  common  fields  under  the 
old  system 3  was,  as  Arthur  Young  assures  us,  miserably 
poor.  This  system  produced  results  far  inferior  to  those 
gained  on  enclosed  lands,  the  crop  of  wheat  in  one  instance 
being,  according  to  Young,  only  seventeen  or  eighteen 
bushels  per  acre,  as  against  twenty-six  bushels  on  en- 
closures.4 Similarly,  the  fleece  of  sheep  pastured  on  com- 
mon fields  weighed  only  3|  Ibs.,  as  compared  with  9 
Ibs.  on  enclosures.5  It  is  noticeable,  too,  that  Rent, 
where  much  land  had  for  a  long  time  been  enclosed, 
was  reckoned  in  Young's  time  the  best  cultivated  and 
most  fertile  county  in  England.6  Norfolk,  also,  was  pre- 
eminent for  good  husbandry,7  in  its  excellent  rotation 
of  cropb  and  culture  of  clover,  rye-grass,  and  winter  roots, 
due,  said  Young  in  1770,  to  the  division  of  the  county 
chiefly  into  large  farms.8  "  Great  farms  have  been  the 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  38,  39. 

2  76. ,  quoting  Shaw  Lefevre,  The  English  and  Irish  Land  Question,  p. 
199.      The  General  Report  on  Enclosures,  p.  46  (Board  of  Agriculture), 
gives  4,187,056  as  the  acreage  enclosed  from  Queen  Anne's  reign  to  1805 
only. 

3  It  may  be  well  to  summarise  it  again  briefly.     The  arable  land  of  each 
village  under  this  system  was  still  divided  into  three  great  strips,  sub- 
divided by  "baulks"  three  yards  wide.     Every  farmer  would  own  one 
piece  of  land  in  each  strip — probably  more — and  all  alike  were  bound  to 
follow  the  customary  tillage ;   this  was  to  leave  one  strip  fallow  every 
year,  while  on  one  of  the  other  two  wheat  was  always  grown,  the  third 
being  occupied  by  barley  or  oats,  pease  or  tares.      The   meadows,  also, 
were  still  held  in  common,  every  man  having  his  own  plot  up  to  hay 
harvest,  after  which  the  fences  were  thrown  down,  and  all  householders' 
cattle  were  allowed  to  graze  on  it  freely,  while  for  the  next  crop  the  plota 
were  redistributed.     Every  farmer  also  had  the  right  of  pasture  on  the 
waste. 

4  At  Risby,  Yorks  ;  see  Northern  Tour,  i.  160-162. 

6  Northern  Tour,  iv.  190. 

8  Eastern  Tour,  Hi.  108-109  ;  Northern  Tonr,  i.  292. 

7  Eastern  Tour,  ii.  150.  8  /&.,  ii.  160,161. 


276  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

soul  of  the  Norfolk  culture."  These  would  have  been  im- 
possible without  enclosing  land,  and  it  is  clear  that  great 
advantages  were  derived  from  this  practice.  Essex,  again, 
was  a  county  notable  for  its  progressive  husbandry,  and 
one  of  the  first  in  which  turnips  were  introduced  as  a  root 
crop ; l  and  Essex  had  been  noted  for  its  enclosures  for 
many  generations.2  But,  in  spite  of  these  advantages, 
there  was  one  gloomy  feature  in  this  new  agricultural  epoch 
which  cannot  be  lightly  passed  over.  I  refer  to  the  decay 
of  the  yeomen,  who,  at  one  time,  were  the  chief  glory  of 
the  agricultural  life  of  mediaeval  England. 

§  168.   The  Decay  of  the  Yewnanry. 

For  centuries  the  yeoman  had  held  an  honoured  position 
in  English  history,  and  as  lately  as  the  reign  of  Elizabeth, 
he  is  alluded  to  in  sympathetic  and  admiring  terms  by  the 
descriptive  Harrison.  "  This  sort  ot  people,"  he  says,  "  have 
a  certain  pre-eminence  and  more  estimation  than  labourers 
and  the  common  sort  of  artificers,  and  these  commonly  live 
wealthily,  keep  good  houses,  and  travel  to  get  riches.  They 
are  also  for  the  most  part  farmers  to  gentlemen,  or  at  the 
leastwise  artificers ;  and  with  grazing,  frequenting  of  markets, 
and  keeping  of  servants,  do  come  to  great  wealth,  insomuch 
that  many  of  them  are  able  to,  and  do,  buy  the  lands  of 
unthrifty  gentlemen,  and  often  setting  their  sons  to  the 
schools,  to  the  Universities,  and  to  the  Inns  of  Court,  or 
otherwise  leaving  them  sufficient  lands  whereon  they  may 
live  without  labour,  do  make  them  by  those  means  to 
become  gentlemen.  These  were  they  that  in  times  past 
made  all  France  afraid.  And  albeit  they  be  not  called 
'  master/  as  gentlemen  are,  or  '  Sir,'  as  to  knights  apper- 
taineth,  but  only  '  John '  and  '  Thomas,'  yet  have  they 
been  found  to  have  done  very  good  service.  The  kings  of 
England  in  foughten  battles  were  wont  to  remain  among 
them  (who  were  their  footmen),  as  the  French  kings  did 

1  In  1694.     See  quotation  from  Houghton,  Collections  in  Husbandry  and 
Trade,  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  s,  v.  Agriculture, 
s  Above,  p.  215. 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  277 

amongst  their  horsemen,  the  prince  thereby  shewing  where 
his  chief  strength  did  consist."  x 

The  decline  of  this  sturdy  body  of  small  farmers  forms  a 
sad  interlude  in  the  growing  prosperity  of  the  country,  and 
is  due  to  a  combination  of  various  causes.  Among  these 
we  may  place  the  "Statute  of  Frauds,"  of  1677,  not  indeed 
as  a  primary  cause,  but  as  having  a  weakening  effect  upon 
the  position  of  the  yeomen,  and  contributing  in  some  degree 
to  assist  other  causes  which  made  themselves  felt  more 
keenly  in  the  eighteenth  century.  By  this  somewhat  high- 
handed Act2  it  was  decreed  that  after  July  24th,  1G77, 
all  interests  in  land  whatsoever,  if  created  by  any  other 
process  except  by  deed,  should  be  treated  as  tenancies  at 
will  only,  any  law  or  usage  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 
The  intention,  apparently,  of  those  who  passed  this  law — 
an  intention  which  in  the  end  resulted  successfully — was 
to  extinguish  all  those  numerous  small  freeholders  who 
had  no  written  evidence  to  prove  that  they  held  their  lands, 
as  they  had  done  for  centuries,  on  condition  of  paying  a 
small  fixed  and  customary  rent.3  This  Act  certainly 
succeeded  in  dispossessing  many  of  the  class  at  which  it 
was  aimed  ;  but  there  were  yet  a  certain  number  against 
whom  it  was  inoperative  ;  hence,  at  the  end  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  twenty  years  or  so  after  it  was  passed, 
Gregory  King  is  able  to  estimate  that  there  were  180,000 
freeholders  in  England,  including,  of  course,  the  larger 
owners.4  But  by  the  time  of  Arthur  Young  these  also  had 
disappeared,  or  at  least  were  rapidly  disappearing,6  and  he 
sincerely  regrets  "  to  see  their  lands  now  in  the  hands  of 
monopolising  lords."  6  This  view  is  the  more  remarkable  as 
coming  from  Arthur  Young,  because  he  was  an  ardent 
advocate  of  the  new  agriculture  and  large  farms ;  but  as  a 

1  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  Bk.  III.  ch.  iv.  (edn.  1677),  page 
13,  Camelot  Series  edn. 

a  The  29  Charles  II.,  c.  3.  »  Cf.  Rogers,  Hi*t.  Agric.,  v.  15,  87. 

4  See  Macaulay,  History  of  England,  ch.  iii.,  who  thinks  this  too  high, 
and  suggests  160,000. 

8  In  1787  they  had  practically  disappeared  in  most  parts  of  the  country. 
Young,  Travels  in  France,  i.  86,  il  262  (edn.  1793). 

•  Young,  Inquiry  into  the  Present  Price  of  Provutoiw  and  Size  of  Farmt 
(1773),  pp.  126,  139. 


278  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

practical  man  he  could  see  what  a  loss  the  vanished  yeoman 
was  to  his  country.  The  curious  thing  about  their  dis- 
appearance is  its  comparative  rapidity.1  Of  course  many 
yeomen  existed  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  a  few  still  remain  at  the  end  of  it ;  but  there  was  a 
sudden  and  remarkable  diminution  in  their  numbers  during 
the  century  just  before  Arthur  Young  wrote  (1700-1800). 
At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  a  writer  on  the 
State  of  Great  Britain*  was  able  to  say  that  the  free- 
holders of  England  were  "  more  in  number  and  richer  than 
in  any  country  of  the  like  extent  in  Europe.  £40  or  £50 
is  very  ordinary,  £100  or  £200  in  some  counties  is  not 
rare;  sometimes  in  Kent  and  in  the  Weald  of  Sussex, 
£500  or  £600  per  annum,  and  £3000  or  £4000  stock." 
The  evidence,  says  an  eminent  economist,3  is  conclusive 
that  up  to  the  Revolution  of  1688  the  yeomen  freeholders 
were  in  most  parts  of  the  country  an  important  feature  in 
social  life. 

We  may  therefore  well  inquire  into  the  reasons  of  their 
decay. 

§  169.   Causes  of  the  Decay  of  the   Yeomanry. 

The  cause  was  partly  political  and  partly  social.  After 
the  revolution  of  1688,  the  landed  gentry  became  politically 
and  socially  supreme,4  and  any  successful  merchant  prince 
— and  these  were  not  few — who  wished  to  gain  a  footing, 
sought,  in  the  first  place,  to  imitate  them  by  becoming 
a  great  landowner;  hence  it  became  quite  a  policy  to 
buy  out  the  smaller  farmers,5  who  were  often  practically 
compelled  to  sell  their  holdings.  At  the  same  time,  the 
custom  of  primogeniture  and  strict  settlements  prevented 
land  from  being  much  subdivided,  so  that  small  or  divided 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  59,  whom  see  for  his  special  chapter 
on  the  decay  of  the  yeomanry. 

2  Chamberlayne,  State  of  Great  Britain,  Part  I.,  Book  III.  p.  176  (edn. 
1737).     First  published  in  1669. 

3  Toynbee,  u.  s. ,  p.  60.  4  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  62. 
6  Ib.,  63,  64,  who  quotes  Laurence's  Duty  of  a  Steward  (1727),  p.  36. 

Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  379,  says  they  were  not  bought  out 
then,  but  his  assertion  seems  unsupported  by  any  adequate  evidence.  He 
admits,  however,  that  "in  subsequent  years  they  were  forced  to  sell." 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  279 

estates  rarely  came  into  the  market  for  the  smaller  free- 
holders to  buy.1  It  is  also  certain  that  this  result  was 
accelerated  by  the  fact  that  small  farms  no  longer  paid 
under  the  old  system  of  agriculture,  and  the  new  system 
involved  an  outlay  which  the  yeoman  could  not  afford.2 
The  yeomanry  were  superseded  by  capitalist  farmers  and 
agricultural  labourers.3  Farming  on  a  large  scale  became 
more  necessary,  and  this  again  assisted  in  extinguishing  the 
smaller  men,  for  large  enclosures  were  made  by  the  landed 
gentry  in  spite  of  feeble  opposition  from  the  yeomen,4  who, 
however,  could  rarely  afford  to  pay  the  law  costs  necessary 
to  put  a  stop  to  the  encroachments  of  their  greater  neigh- 
bours. Later  on,  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
(especially  in  1801)  the  burden  of  the  ever-increasing  poor- 
rates — a  direct  consequence  of  the  Poor  Law  and  assessment 
system  introduced  by  the  Act  of  Elizabeth  6 — largely  aided  in 
their  ruin,  for  since  the  labourers  were  not  and  could  not  be 
maintained  by  the  wages  which  their  employers  paid  them, 
it  followed  that  the  small  holders  were  taxed  for  the  benefit 
of  the  large  farmers.8  The  finishing  stroke  to  a  rapidly 
decaying  class  was  given  by  the  fall  in  prices  after  the  great 
Continental  War  (1815),  following  on  the  inflation  of  pre- 
vious years ; 7  and  as  their  small  properties  came  into  the 
market  and  no  holders  of  their  own  class  appeared  to  take 
their  place,8  their  lands  went  to  swell  the  large  farms  that 
were  now  the  typical  feature  of  British  agriculture.  Here 
and  there  an  occasional  representative  of  a  once  large  and 
worthy  body  of  men  still  remains  (1895),  but  the  English 
yeoman  of  the  days  of  Henry  V.  and  Queen  Elizabeth,  as  a 
class,  has  disappeared  entirely.9 

§  170.  The  Rise  in  Rent. 

The  farmer,  meanwhile,  was  heavily  taxed  for  his  land,  and 
though  the  high  prices  which  he  obtained  for  his  corn  up  to 

1  Toynbee,  «.  «.,  p.  64 ;  and  Lecky,  History,  i.  198. 

2  Toynbee,  p.  65,  and  Cunningham,  «.  «.,  ii.  480. 

*  Cunningham,  ii.  364,  480. 

*  Of.  the  case  of  Pickering,  Yorks ;  Marshall's  Yorkshire,  p.  64 ;  Toyn- 
bee, Ind.  Rev.,  p.  65.  5  Above,  p.  262. 

a  Cunningham,  Qrowlh  of  Industry,  ii.  478.  7  76.,  p.  479.  •  76. 

9  Cf.  also  Lecky,  Hittory  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  i.  p.  19«. 


28o  INDUSTRY  IN"  ENGLAND 

the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws  enabled  him  to  pay  it,  his  rent  was 
certainly  at  a  very  high  figure.  The  rise  had  begun,  as  we 
have  seen,  after  the  dissolution  of  the  monasteries  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  though  in  that  period  it  was  slow.  But 
Latimer  asserts x  that  his  father  only  paid  £3  or  £4  for  a 
holding  which  in  the  next  generation  was  rented  at  £16, 
the  increased  figure  being  only  partially  accounted  for  by 
the  general  rise  in  prices.  In  the  seventeenth  century, 
according  to  King,2  rents  were  more  than  doubled,  and  the 
sixpence  per  acre  of  mediaeval  times  must  have  seemed 
almost  mythical.  The  Belvoir  estate,  the  property  of  the 
Dukes  of  Rutland,  who  are  spoken  of  as  indulgent  landlords, 
forms  a  good  example  of  the  rise  of  rent  in  the  two  following 
centuries.3  In  1692  land  is  found  rented  at  3s.  9£d.  an 
acre,  and  a  little  later  at  4s.  l|d.  By  the  year  1799  the 
same  land  had  risen  to  19s.  3fd.,  with  a  further  rise  in 
1812  to  25s.  8|d.  In  1830  it  was  at  25s.  Ifd.,  but  in 
1850  had  risen  to  38s.  8d.,  that  is  about  ten  times  the 
seventeenth  century  rent.  This  enormous  rise  could  not 
have  been  due  solely  to  increase  of  skill  in  agricultural 
industry,  but  was  partly  derived  from  artificial  conditions 
imposed  by  the  corn  laws,  and  partly  from  increased 
economy  in  production,  this  economy  often  meaning  the 
oppression  and  degradation  of  the  agricultural  labourer. 

§  171.   The  Fall  in   Wages. 

This  degradation  was,  if  not  brought  about,  yet  at  least 
greatly  assisted  by  the  system  of  assessment  of  wages  which 
we  noticed  in  Elizabeth's  reign,  a  system  under  which  the 
labourer  was  forced  by  law  to  accept  the  wages  which  the 
justices  (generally  the  landed  proprietors,  his  employers) 
arranged  to  give  him.  It  is  not  the  business  of  an  historian 
to  make  charges  against  a  class,  but  to  put  facts  in  their 
due  perspective.  Therefore  without  comment  upon  the 
action  of  the  justices  in  this  matter  I  shall  merely  refer  to 
one  or  two  of  these  assessments  and  show  their  effect  upon 
the  condition  of  labour,  especially  of  agricultural  labour, 

1  Above,  p.  213.  2  Above,  p.  270. 

3  Rogers,  Hist.  Aqric.,  v.  29  ;  cf.  also  Six  Centuries,  p.  479. 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  281 

which  occupied,  till  Arthur  Young's  time,  more  than  one- 
third  of  the  working-classes.1  Speaking  generally  for  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  we  may  quote  Professor 
Rogers'  remark,  that  "  if  we  suppose  the  ordinary  labourer 
to  get  3s.  6d.  a  week  throughout  the  year,  by  adding  his 
harvest  allowance  to  his  winter  wages,  it  would  have  taken 
him  more  than  forty  weeks  to  earn  the  provisions  which  in 
1495  he  could  have  got  with  fifteen  weeks'  labour,  while 
the  artisan  would  be  obliged  to  have  given  thirty-two  weeks' 
work  for  the  same  result."  z  I  have  already  given  a  table  8  of 
some  of  these  assessments,  and  we  may  take  in  detail,  as  an 
example,  the  one  made  by  the  Rutland  magistrates  in  April 
1610.  The  wages  of  an  ordinary  agricultural  labourer  are 
put  at  7d.  a  day  from  Easter  to  Michaelmas,  and  at  6d. 
from  Michaelmas  to  Easter.  Artisans  get  lOd.  or  9d.  in 
summer,  and  8d.  in  winter.  Now,  the  price  of  food  was 
75  per  cent,  dearer  than  in  1564,  while  the  rate  of  wages 
was  about  the  same  ;  and  compared  with  (say)  1495,  food 
was  three,  or  even  four,  times  dearer.  Another  assessment, 
in  Essex  in  1661,  allows  Is.  a  day  in  winter,  and  Is.  2d. 
in  summer,  for  ordinary  labour.  But,  in  1661,  the  price 
of  wheat  (70s.  6d.  a  quarter)  was  just  double  the  price  of 
1610  (35s.  2£d.).  The  labourer  was  worse  off  than  ever. 
Another  typical  assessment  is  that  of  Warwick,  in  1684, 
when  wages  of  labourers  are  fixed  at  8d.  a  day  in  summer, 
7d.  in  winter;  of  artisans  at  Is.  a  day.  At  this  period 
Professor  Rogers  4  reckons  the  yearly  earnings  of  an  artisan 
at  £15,  13s. ;  of  a  farm  labourer  at  £10,  8s.  8d.,  exclusive 
of  harvest  work  ;  while  the  cost  of  a  year's  stock  of  pro- 
visions was  £14,  11s.  6d.  It  is  true  that  at  this  period 
the  labourers  still  possessed  certain  advantages  afterwards 
lost,  such  as  common  rights,6  which,  besides  providing 
fuel,  enabled  them  to  keep  cows,  pigs,  and  poultry  on  the 
waste.  Their  cottages,  too,  were  often  rent  free,  being 

1  That  is  2,800,000  out  of  8,500,000  in  1769 ;  Young,  Northern  Tour,  iv. 
417-419,  364. 

2  Rogers,  ,S'»a:  Centuries,  p.  390.  *  Above,  p.  267. 
4  Six  Centuries,  p.  395. 

•  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  487  ;  and  Young,  Annul*  of  Agri- 
culture, xxxvi.  516. 


282  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

built  upon  the  waste,1  while  each  cottage,  by  an  Act  of 
Elizabeth,2  was  supposed  to  have  a  piece  of  land  attached 
to  it,  though  this  provision,  after  being  frequently  evaded, 
was  finally  repealed  in  1775.  But  yet  it  is  evident  that, 
even  allowing  for  these  privileges,  which,  after  all,  were 
now  being  rapidly  curtailed,  the  ordinary  agricultural 
labourer — that  is,  the  mass  of  the  wage-earning  population 
— must  have  found  it  hard  work  to  live  decently.  There 
was,  however,  a  short  interval  of  higher  wages  during  the 
Civil  War  and  the  commonwealth,3  the  rise  being  due  not 
only  to  the  demand  of  all  sorts  of  stores  for  the  contending 
armies,  but  also  to  the  demand  for  men  to  recruit  their 
forces.4  Artisans  could  get  2s.  6d.  a  day  instead  of  6d.,5 
and  the  rise  thus  brought  about  did  not  immediately  dis- 
appear. But  prices  were  still  rising  steadily,  and  wages 
did  not  follow  them  closely  enough  to  prevent  great  distress 
among  the  working-classes.  At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  starvation  rates  of  pay  are  complained  of  by  the 
well-known  Sir  Matthew  Hale6  (1683),  and  twenty  years 
before  that  the  increase  of  pauperism  had  necessitated  the 
passing  of  that  Act  of  Settlement  which  afterwards  became 
so  unpleasantly  celebrated.7  There  are  historians  who 
maintain  that  the  Elizabethan  system  of  assessment  of 
wages  was  not  responsible  for  these  evils ;  but  even  if  not 
responsible  it  certainly  encouraged  them ;  and  not  even 
the  most  enthusiastic  admirers  of  that  unfortunate  Act  can 
deny  that  wages  were  never  affected  by  it  beneficially,  but 
continued  to  decline  with  remarkable  persistency.8  By  the 

1  Young,  Farmer's  Letters,  i.  205  (edn.  1771).  -  The  31  Eliz.,  c.  7. 

3  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  98  ;  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  194. 
4SeePar£.  Hist.,ii.  10. 

5  A  quotation  from  Reasons  for  a  Limited  Exportation  of  Wool,  1677,  in 
Smith's  Chronicon  Ruisticum,  i.  257. 
8  Provision  for  Poor  (1683),  p.  18. 

7  The  13  and  14  Charles  II. ,  c.  12.     Briefly  it  gave  a  parish  power  to 
remove  a  new  comer  within  40  days,  and  send  him  back  to  the  parish 
where  he  was  legally  settled,  if  he  was  likely  to  require  relief  from  the 
rates.     This  practically  chained  the  labourer  to  his  native  parish.     See 
below,  p.  416,  and  c/.  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  p.  64. 

8  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  200,  remarks  :  "  During  this  period 
there  were  considerable  fluctuations  of  prices  ;  the  Cambridge  wheat  rents 
for  1654-5  are  at  24s.  94d.,  and  those  for  1658-59  at  52s.  2£d.     Yet  though 


PROGRESS  OF  AGRICULTURE  283 

beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  condition  of  the 
labourer  had  sunk  to  one  of  great  poverty.  The  ordinary 
peasant,  in  1725,  for  instance,  would  not  earn  more  than 
about  £13  or  .£15  a  year;  artisans  could  not  gain  more 
than  £15,  13s. ;  while  the  cost  of  the  stock  of  provisions  was 
£16,  2s.  3d.1  Thus  the  husbandman  who,  in  1495,  could 
get  a  similar  stock  of  food  by  fifteen  weeks'  work,  and  the 
artisan  who  could  have  earned  it  in  ten  weeks,  could  not 
feed  himself  in  1725  with  a  whole  year's  labour.2  His 
wages  had  to  be  supplemented  out  of  the  rates ;  and  there 
was  but  little  alteration  in  these  wages  till  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  But  about  that  time  (1750)  he 
had  begun  to  share  in  the  general  prosperity  caused  by  the 
success  of  the  new  agriculture  and  the  growth  of  trade  and 
manufactures.  Whereas  in  the  seventeenth  century  his 
average  daily  wages  had  been  lO^d.,  and  the  price  of  corn 
38s.  2d.,  in  the  first  sixty  years  of  the  eighteenth  century 
wages  had  risen  to  Is.,  and  the  price  of  corn  was  only  32s.8 
The  evil,  however,  had  been  done,  and  although  a  short 
period  of  prosperity,  chiefly  due  to  the  advance  made  by 
the  new  agriculture  and  manufactures,  cheered  the  labourer 
for  a  time,  his  condition  after  the  Industrial  Revolution 
deteriorated  again  rapidly,  till  we  find  him  at  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  for  some  time  afterwards,  in  a 
condition  of  chronic  misery. 

the  price  of  corn  was  doubled  in  this  brief  period,  the  Bedford  justices  do 
not  seem  to  have  felt  called  upon  to  make  any  new  order  or  to  try  to 
enforce  a  different  rate  of  wages."  This  is  not  surprising ;  it  merely 
illustrates  what  I  have  remarked  before  about  the  temptations  of  the 
Assessment  Act  to  employers  (above,  pp.  255,  256).  Yet  Dr  Cunningham 
seems  to  think  the  assessment  system  had  no  influence  on  wages. 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  398.  *  Ib. 

*  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  67. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

COMMERCE    AND    WAR    IN    THE    SEVENTEENTH    AND 
EIGHTEENTH    CENTURIES 

§  172.   England  a  Commercial  Power. 

IN  glancing  over  the  progress  of  foreign  trade  in  the  time 
of  Elizabeth,  we  noticed  that  our  war  with  Spain  was  due 
to  commercial  as  well  as  to  religious  causes.  The  opening 
up  of  the  New  World  had  made  a  struggle  for  power  in  the 
West  now  almost  inevitable  among  European  nations  ;  the 
new  route  to  India  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  discovered 
by  Vasco  di  Gama,  made  another  struggle  for  commercial 
supremacy  as  inevitable  in  the  far  East.  But  England  was 
certainly  slow  in  entering  the  field.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
she  was  hardly  yet  ready  either  in  industry,  commerce,  or 
political  power.  In  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  English  sea- 
men had  not  yet  ventured  far  into  the  Mediterranean,1  and 
even  in  the  last  years  of  Queen  Elizabeth  England  had 
absolutely  no  possessions  outside  Europe,  for  every  scheme 
of  colonial  settlement  had  failed.2  For  a  century  or  more 
after  the  discoveries  of  Columbus  and  di  Gama,  Spain  and 
Portugal,  and  a  little  later  on  Holland,  had  practically  a 
monopoly  both  of  the  Eastern  and  Western  trade.  But  now 
a  change  had  come.  The  Englishmen  of  the  Elizabethan 
age  cast  off  their  fear  of  Spain,  and  entered  into  rivalry 
with  Holland,  till  their  descendants  finally  made  England 
the  supreme  commercial  power  of  the  modern  world.  The 
history  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  is  a 
continuous  record  of  their  struggles  to  attain  this  object. 
War  is,  in  fact,  their  characteristic  feature,  and  it  had 
everywhere  the  same  purpose.3 

1  Cf.  above,  p.  225.    Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  iv.  146,  says  they  had  not  ven- 
tured further  than  Malaga,  quoting  a  Statute  of  Henry  VHI.  (32  Hen. 
VIII.,  c.  14). 

2  Seeley,  Expansion  of  England,  p.  9.  3  Ib.,  pp.  20,  21. 

284 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  285 

§  173.    The  Beginnings  of  the  Struggle  with  Spain. 

In  the  last  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century  Elizabeth 
had  entered  (1577)  into  an  alliance,  offensive  and  defensive, 
with  Holland  against  Spain.1  The  motive  of  the  alliance 
was  partly  religious,  but  the  shrewd  queen  and  her  equally 
shrewd  statesmen  doubtless  foresaw  more  than  spiritual 
advantages  to  be  gained  thereby.  After  the  alliance,  Drake 
and  the  other  great  sea-captains  of  that  day  began  a  system 
of  buccaneering  annoyances  to  Spanish  commerce.2  The 
Spanish  and  Portuguese  trade  and  factories  in  the  East  were 
considered  the  lawful  prizes  of  the  English  and  of  their  allies 
the  Dutch.  The  latter,  as  all  know,  were  more  successful 
at  first  than  we  were,  and  soon  established  an  Oriental 
Empire  in  the  Indian  Archipelago.  But  at  the  very  end  of 
her  reign  England  had  prospered  sufficiently  for  Elizabeth 
to  grant  charters  to  the  Levant  Company  (15 8 1),3  and  ite 
far  greater  off-shoot,  the  East  India  Company  (1600).4 
Then,  when  a  fresh  war  with  Spain  was  imminent,  England 
wisely  began  to  plant  colonies  in  North  America,  at  the 
suggestion  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  ; 5  and  after  one  or  two 
other  abortive  attempts,  Virginia  was  successfully  founded 
by  the  London  Company6  in  1609,  and  became  a  Crown 
colony7  in  1624.  After  this,  as  every  one  knows,  colonies 
grew  rapidly  on  the  strip  of  coast  between  the  Alleghany 
Mountains  and  the  Atlantic.  Meanwhile,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  world  the  East  India  Company  was  slowly  gaining 
ground,  and  founding  English  agencies  or  "  factories,"  that 
of  Surat  (in  1612)  being  the  most  important.8  As  yet  we 
had  not  come  into  open  con6ict  with  Spain  or  Portugal ; 
and,  indeed,  we  owed  the  possession  of  Bombay9  to  the 
marriage  of  Charles  II.  with  Katherine  of  Braganza  (1662). 
Then  the  Company  gained  from  Charles  II.  the  important 

i  Green,  History,  ii.  410. 

a  Qreen,  History,  ii.  424,  425 ;  Froude,  History,  viii.  440,  ix.  337. 

3  Craik,  History  of  British  Commerce,  i.  261,  ii.  19: 

4  Ib.,  i.  263,  ii.  13  sqq.  8  Hakluyt,  iii.  243,  263,  280. 

8  The  first  charter  given  by  James  I.  was  in  1606,  but  the  chief  settle- 
ment was  made  in  1609.  Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  144. 

7  Ib.,  ii.  146.  8  Cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  16. 

'•'  Annals  of  England,  p.  473.  The  Island  was  handed  over  to  the  Com- 
pany in  1668. 


286  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

privilege  of  making  peace  or  war  on  its  own  account.1 
It  had  a  good  many  foes  to  contend  with,  both  among 
natives  and  European  nations,  among  whom  the  French2 
were  as  powerful  as  the  Portuguese.  But  it  is  curious  to 
note  how  in  every  part  of  the  colonial  world  England  has 
been  the  last  to  come  to  the  front  In  the  New  World 
Spain  and  France,  in  the  East  the  Portuguese  and  Dutch, 
and  later  in  Africa  and  Australia  the  Dutch  again — all 
were  before  her.  For  a  great  colonising  power  it  is  re- 
markable how  invariably  she  has  let  others  lead  the  way. 

§   174.  Cromwell's  Commercial  Wars  and  the  Navi- 
gation Acts. 

The  monopoly  of  Spain  was  first  definitely  attacked  as 
a  matter  of  policy  by  Cromwell,  for  the  deeds  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan seamen  were  not  always  recognised  by  the  State. 
James  I.  had  been  too  timid  to  declare  war,  and  Charles  I. 
was  too  much  in  danger  himself  to  think  of  trusting  his 
subjects  to  support  him  if  he  did  so.  But  Cromwell  was 
supported  both  by  the  religious  views  of  the  Puritans  and 
by  the  desires  of  the  merchants  when  he  declared  war 
against  England's  great  foe.3  He  demanded  trade  with  the 
Spanish  colonies,  and  religious  freedom  for  English  settlers 
in  such  colonies.  Of  course  his  demands  were  refused,  as 
he  well  knew  that  they  would  be.  Thereupon  he  seized 
Jamaica  (1655),  though  he  failed  to  secure  Cuba  ;  *  and  at 
any  rate  succeeded  in  giving  the  English  a  secure  footing 
in  the  West  Indies.  He  seized  Dunkirk  also  (1658)  from 
Spain  (then  at  war  with  France),5  with  a  view  to  securing  for 
England  a  monopoly  of  the  Channel  to  the  exclusion  of  her 
former  friends  the  Dutch.  Dunkirk,  however,  was  a  useless 
acquisition,  and  was  sold  again 6  by  Charles  II.  Not 
content  with  victory  in  the  West,  Cromwell,  with  the  full 
consent  of  mercantile  England,  declared  war  against  the 

1  Craik,  British  Commerce.,  ii.  101. 

-  Seeley,  Expansion  of  England,  p.  284. 

3  Seeley,  Expansion,  p.  32  ;  Cunningham,  ii.  150. 

4  Thurloe,  State,  Papers,  iv.  40;  Annals  of  England,  p.  452. 

5  Annals  of  England,  p.  453. 

6  In  1662,  October  27th,  for  five  million  livres. 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  287 

Dutch,  who  were  now  more  our  rivals  than  our  friends.  It 
would  have  been  perfectly  possible  for  the  English  and 
the  Dutch  to  have  remained  upon  good  terms  ;  but  the 
great  idea  of  the  statesmen  and  merchants  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  was  to  gain  a  sole  market 
and  a  monopoly  of  trade,  and  therefore  they  thought  the  Dutch 
ought  to  be  crushed.  The  method  adopted  was  shown  in  the 
famous  Navigation  Act1  of  1651,  which  forbade  the  import 
or  export  of  any  goods  between  Asia,  Africa,  America,  and 
England,  unless  these  were  carried  in  English  ships  manned 
by  English  crews.  This  Act  was  confirmed  by  another 2 
of  1661,  which  not  only  laid  down  the  above  conditions, 
but  added  that  the  ships  must  be  English  built  and 
owned  by  Englishmen  ;  and  these  Acts  continued  in  opera- 
tion till  early  in  the  nineteenth  century.  As  to  their  effect, 
there  has  been  great  diversity  of  opinion ;  and  speaking 
solely  from  the  point  of  view  of  theoretical  economics,  there 
would  seem  no  doubt  that  they  were  decidedly  harmful,  as 
being  an  attempt  to  maintain  for  a  single  country  a  mono- 
poly that  would  naturally  be  shared  by  others.  A  monopoly 
generally  implies  an  unnecessary  tax  upon  some  portion  of 
the  community  for  the  benefit  of  another  portion,  and  it 
has  been  complained  that  these  Navigation  Laws  benefited 
the  shipping  interest  at  the  expense  of  the  rest  of  the 
nation.3  It  has  further  been  pointed  out  (even  by  writers 
of  that  time)  4  that  our  general  commerce  was  injuriously 
affected  by  "  lessening  the  resort  of  strangers  to  our  ports," 
and  also  that  after  all  it  did  not  really  increase  English 
trade,6  but  that  the  Eastland  and  Baltic  trade  had  actually 
diminished.  Other  objections  are  that  the  Colonies  and 
also  English  producers  were  restricted  in  their  dealings  and 
unable  to  obtain  the  best  market  for  some  of  their  pro- 
ducts ; 6  and  again  that,  however  beneficial  their  ultimate 
results  may  have  been,  the  enormous  expenses 7  incurred 

1  Act  c.  22  of  1651  (Commonwealth).        a  Act  12  Charles  II. ,  c.  18. 

5  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  91. 

4  Roger  Coke,  Treatise  on  Trade  (1671). 

•  Sir  Josiah  Child,  Treatise  on  Trade  (1698). 

8  Child,  New  Discourse,  p.  115. 

7  Alluded  to  by  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  110. 


288  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

by  the  wars  with  the  Dutch  which  followed  them  counter- 
balanced for  a  long  time  any  advantages  which  they 
procured. 

But  it  has  been  truly  urged  that  the  legislators  who  made 
these  celebrated  laws  were  perfectly  aware  of  all  the  dis- 
advantages they  entailed,  but  considered l  that  the  growth 
of  national  power  would  be  on  the  whole  fostered,  the  reserve 
for  the  navy  strengthened,  and  the  rivalry  of  the  Dutch  in 
course  of  time  annihilated.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  all 
these  things  came  to  pass.  More  especially  it  has  been 
contended  that  they  helped  to  defend  the  country  against 
foreign  foes,  although  they  might  hamper  trade.  For  this 
reason  Adam  Smith,2  speaking  as  a  politician  and  not  as  an 
economist,  eulogises  these  Acts  in  the  concise  remark  :  "  As 
defence  is  much  more  important  than  opulence,  the  Act  of 
Navigation  is  perhaps  the  wisest  of  all  the  commercial 
regulations  of  England."  This  dictum  of  so  great  an 
economist  is  worthy  of  the  utmost  consideration,  for  it  shows 
us  that  there  are  occasions  when  economics  must  give  way 
to  politics,  and  that  political  economy  best  bears  out  its  title 
as  a  science  when  it  remembers  that  it  is  qualified  by  the 
attribute  "  political." 

On  the  whole,  then,  with  all  their  evils,  the  Navigation 
Acts  were  perhaps  not  so  great  a  mistake  as  the  nineteenth 
century  economist  is  at  first  inclined  to  suppose.  At  any 
rate,  Cromwell  succeeded  in  his  immediate  object.  The 
Dutch  were  provoked  into  a  war  in  which  their  prestige  was 
broken  and  their  trade  greatly  injured  ;  and  before  long  the 
contest  between  them  and  the  English  for  the  mastery  of 
the  seas  was  practically  decided.  By  the  end  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  Holland  had  to  own  her  defeat,  and  England 
began  distinctly  to  take  the  lead  in  commerce.3 

§  175.   The  Wars  of  William  III.  and  of  Anne. 

But  the  wars  with  Holland  were  only  the  beginnings  of 
a  larger  struggle  in  which  England  contended  against  all 

1  Alluded  to  by  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  112. 

2  Wealth  of  Motions,  Bk.  IV.  ch.  ii.  (ii.  38,  Clarendon  Press  edn.).     His 
whole  discussion  of  them  should  be  read. 

3  Qf.  Seeley,  Expansion  of  England,  86. 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  289 

Western  Europe — a  struggle  that  was  to  last  with  com- 
paratively brief  intermissions  til)  well  into  the  nineteenth 
century.  The  continental  wars  in  which  England  was 
engaged  after  the  deposition  of  James  II.  were  rendered 
necessary  to  some  extent  by  the  tremendous  power  of  France 
under  Louis  XIV.  William  III.  saw  it  was  inevitable  for 
the  interests  of  England  that  Louis  XIV.  should  be  checked, 
and  the  war  of  the  Spanish  Succession  (1702-13)  was 
carried  on  with  the  object  of  preventing  that  king  from 
joining  the  resources  of  Spain  to  those  of  his  own  kingdom. 
For  if  he  had  done  so,  two  disastrous  results  would  have 
happened.  The  Stuarts  would  by  his  help  have  been 
restored  to  the  English  throne,  and  the  struggle  against 
absolute  monarchy  and  religious  tyranny  would  unfortunately 
have  been  fought  over  again.  Secondly,  the  growth  of 
English  commerce  and  colonies  would  have  been  checked, 
if  not  utterly  annihilated.  Here  the  real  point  of  conten- 
tion between  England  and  France  was  the  New  World. 
The  Spanish  Succession,  remote  as  it  seemed,  concerned 
Englishmen,  because  France  threatened  by  her  close  alliance 
and  influence  with  Spain  to  enter  into  the  Spanish  monopoly 
of  the  New  World  and  to  keep  England  out  of  it.1  Hence 
the  most  practical  results  of  the  war  were  seen  in  the  ac- 
quisition of  colonial  power.2  We  were  not  only  preserved 
from  the  Stuarts,  but  also,  when  the  war  was  finally  over 
in  1713,  found  ourselves  in  possession  of  Gibraltar,  now 
one  of  the  keys  of  our  Indian  Empire,  and  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Territory,  Newfoundland,  and  Nova  Scotia  (then  called 
Acadia) — the  foundations  of  our  present  Canadian  dominion. 
England  was  also  allowed  by  Spain  the  monopoly  of  the 
trade  in  negroes  with  Spanish  colonies,3  and  to  send  one 
ship  a  year  to  the  South  Seas.  The  war,  as  far  as  we  were 
concerned,  was  a  commercial  success,  though  we  had  to  pay 
rather  heavily  for  it,  and  were  involved  in  further  difficul- 
ties in  America  afterwards. 

1  Seeley,  Expansion  of  England,  pp.  32  and  33. 

»  This  is  known  as  the  "  Assiento  "  contract  (Art.  12  of  the  Treaty  of 
1713).  The  English  had  the  monopoly  of  the  slave  trade  for  30  yean,  but 
practically  till  war  broke  out  again  in  1739.  The  contract  was  renewed 
for  4  years  in  1748,  but  not  at  the  Peace  of  170.'5. 

T 


290  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§  176.  English  Colonies. 

It  will  be  seen  that  by  this  time  (1713)  England  had 
definitely  entered  the  field  as  a  colonial  power,  and  was 
anxious  to  extend  her  colonial  possessions.  She  had  not 
shown  any  great  desire  for  them  in  earlier  years ;  in  fact, 
we  have  already  remarked  that  she  was  then,  as  she  always 
has  been,  the  last  to  enter  upon  a  colonising  career.  But 
now  England  was  fired  by  the  example  of  other  nations. 
The  motives,  however,  for  our  early  schemes  of  colonisation 
were  rather  mixed.  It  certainly  cannot  be  said  that  our 
colonies  were  a  natural  "  expansion  "  of  the  mother  country, 
and  the  use  of  this  term,1  expansion,  is  apt  to  be  mis- 
leading ;  for  England  was  certainly  by  no  means  over- 
populated  in  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  centuries.  In 
fact,  it  was  then  even  complained  that  colonies  would  drain 
away  population  which  we  could  ill  afford  to  spare.2  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  one  of  the  main  causes  of  colonial 
enterprise,  especially  in  its  earlier  stages,  was  the  desire  to 
gain  some  share  of  the  gold  and  silver 3  which  Spain  had 
obtained  so  freely.  This,  indeed,  is  a  frequent  inducement 
to  open  up  and  to  take  possession  of  new  countries,  as  has 
been  exemplified  in  our  own  time  both  in  Australia  and 
South  Africa.  Often,  however,  those  who  go  out  to  seek 
gold  find  something  better  and  more  lasting  in  the  natural 
resources  of  the  country ;  and  it  is  upon  these  alone  that  a 
really  stable  colony  can  be  founded.  The  dream  of  finding 
Eldorados  passed  away  after  a  few  futile  attempts,  and  men 
began  to  realise  that  America  and  the  Indies — both  East  and 
West — offered  enormous  facilities  for  a  profitable  trade.  The 
profits  of  trade  were  undoubtedly  the  real  motives  of  nearly 
all  our  subsequent  colonial  enterprises,  with  the  exception 

1  The  use  of  this  word  seems  to  me  almost  the  only  fault  of  Prof.  Seeley's 
admirable  lectures.     It  implies  a  kind  of  growth  which  really  never  took 
place  till  late  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

2  See  Britannia  Langmns  (1680),  p.  173. 

3  Adam  Smith,    Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.  ch.  vii.   (Vol.  II.  p.  143, 
Clarendon  Press  edn.) ;  and  Capt.  J.  Smith,  History  of  Virginia,  iii.  3 
(  Works,  407),  mentions  how  this  hope  of  gold  animated  the  first  settlers  in 
Virginia.     So,  too,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  hoped  to  find  gold  in  Guiana,  and 
Frobisher's  expedition  of  1577  was  entirely  to  seek  for  gold.    Craik,  British 
Commerce,  i.  246,  254. 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  291 

of  those  which  proceeded  (as  in  the  case  of  some  of  the 
North  American  colonies)  from  the  desire  to  find  a  country 
where  men  could  practise  freely  the  varied  forms  of  a  new 
religion.  Later  on,  when  these  profits  were  seen  to  be 
considerable,  the  home  Government  began  to  formulate  a 
definite  scheme  of  colonial  policy,  in  the  supposed  interests 
of  the  mother  country  ; l  and  there  seems  to  have  been  at 
one  time  a  clearly-defined  scheme  in  the  heads  of  poli- 
ticians to  raise  up  a  number  of  agricultural  dependencies 
which  would  exchange  their  useful  products  for  the  numerous 
manufactures  which  were  now  becoming  so  predominant  at 
home.2  This  scheme  approximated  more  nearly  to  the 
relations  of  England  and  her  colonies — which  are  all  new 
and  hardly  yet  fully  developed  countries — in  the  present  day. 
Such  a  trading  connection  is  a  natural  and  nearly  inevitable 
state  of  things,  and  is  almost  sure  to  constitute  the  normal 
relationship  of  colony  and  parent  nation.  But  in  the 
eighteenth  century  England  very  nearly  broke  off  this 
relationship  by  ill-judged  political  action,3  while  in  the 
present  day  her  newer  colonies  are  rather  foolishly  attempt- 
ing to  do  the  same  without  having  the  excuse  of  political 
or  economic  ignorance  to  shield  them,  an  ignorance  which  it 
might  have  been  hoped  that  the  War  of  American  Indepen- 
dence and  other  subsequent  events  would  have  helped  todispel. 
But  leaving  the  motives  for  the  foundation  of  colonies, 
we  may  notice  their  remarkable  growth  in  the  seventeenth 
century,4  and  pass  on  to  consider  the  vast  struggle  in  which 
that  growth  involved  England. 

§  177.  Further  Wars  with  France  and  Spain. 

All  the  wars  in  which  England  now  engaged  had  some 
commercial  or  colonial  object  in  view.      People  had  yet  to 

1  See  all  Adam  Smith's  chapter,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.  ch.  vii.: 
also  the  very  valuable  essay  on  Colonies  and  Colony  Trade,  in  M'Culloch's 
Dictionary  of  Commerce,  edn.  1844. 

•  M'Culloch,  Dictionary  of  Commerce  (s.v.  Colonies),  p.  318,  edn.  1844, 
says  this  is  untrue,  at  least  at  first.  *  See  below,  pp.  364-370. 

4  See  the  author's  British  Commerce  and  Colonies,  oh.  iv.  This  being  a 
history  of  industry,  the  subject  of  our  colonies  can  only  be  very  briefly  re- 
ferred to.  Besides  the  American  colonies  (p.  295,  note)  England  now  had 
several  of  the  West  Indian  islands  and  factories  on  the  Gold  Coast. 


292  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

learn  that  the  best  way  to  extend  a  nation's  trade  is  to 
promote  general  peace ;  but,  in  default  of  that,  it  seemed 
well  to  provoke  a  general  war.  Mistaken  as  England's 
policy  was,  it  was  no  more  so  than  that  of  her  neigh- 
bours, for  all  believed,  as  many  do  still,  in  the  sole  market 
theory,  and  England  was  compelled  to  fight  against  other 
nations  who  wished  to  have  a  monopoly  of  trade  and 
colonisation.  Moreover,  England  was  provoked  into  war  by 
the  secret  "  Family  Compact "  between  the  related  rulers  of 
France  and  Spain,  by  which  Philip  V.  of  Spain  agreed  to 
take  away  the  South  American  trade  from  England,  and 
give  it  to  his  nephew,  Louis  XV.  of  France.1  The  result 
was  a  system  of  annoyance  to  English  vessels  trading  in  the 
South  Seas,  culminating  in  the  mutilation  of  an  English 
captain,  one  Jenkins,2  and  war  was  declared  openly  in 
1739.  This  war  merged  into  the  war  of  the  Austrian 
Succession,3  which  lasted  for  eight  years  (1740-48),  a 
matter  with  which  England  was  in  no  way  directly  con- 
cerned, but  which  afforded  a  good  excuse  to  renew  the 
struggle  against  the  commercial  growth  of  France  as  well 
as  Spain.  We  did  not  gain  much  by  it,  except  the  final 
annihilation  of  the  hopes  of  the  Stuarts,  and  a  small  in- 
crease of  British  power  upon  the  high  seas,  but  yet  it  was 
undoubtedly  necessary  to  check  the  power  of  France. 

After  a  few  years,  however,  we  entered  upon  another 
war,  the  Seven  Years'  War4  (1756-63),  in  which  England 
and  Prussia  fought  side  by  side  against  the  rest  of  Europe, 
and  attacked  France  in  particular  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 
The  war  was  largely  caused  by  the  quarrels  of  the  French 
and  English  colonists  in  America,  and  of  the  rival  French 
and  English  companies  in  India.5  We  cannot  here  go  into 
the  details  of  it.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that,  after  a  bad  be- 
ginning, we  won  various  victories  by  sea  and  land,  and  at 

1  Its  main  object  was  the  ruin  of  the  maritime  supremacy  of  Britain. 
Green,  History,  iv.  153. 

2  This  story  is  sometimes  declared  mythical  (e.g.,  by  Seeley,  Expansion, 
p.  21),  but  seems  to  rest  on  some  foundation. 

3  Of.  Green,  History,  iv.  155. 

4  Green,  History,  iv.  175-189  ;  Lecky,  History,  ii.  443,  iii.  44. 

5  Seeley,  Expansion,  p.  27,  points  out  how  many  of  these  conflicts  took 
place  when  England  and  France  were  nominally  at  peace 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  293 

at  the  close  (1763)  found  ourselves,  by  the  Treaty  of  Paris, 
in  possession  of  Canada,  Florida,  and  all  the  French  posses- 
sions east  of  the  Mississippi,  except  New  Orleans ;  and  we 
had  also  gained  the  upper  hand  in  India.  England  held 
now  almost  undisputed  sway  over  the  seas,  and  our  trade 
grew  by  leaps  and  bounds. 

Now,  the  whole  of  this  series  of  wars  is  connected  to- 
gether by  a  necessary  cause,  and  that  is  the  growing  com- 
mercial and  industrial  power  of  England.  This  growth  was 
a  cause  of  the  English  attempt  to  take  a  place  among  other 
commercial  nations,  such  as  the  Dutch  and  Portuguese,  and 
this  attempt  in  turn  necessitated  an  attack  upon  the 
monopoly  of  Spain  and  the  rival  power  of  France.  The 
successful  issue  of  these  wars  again  caused  industry  and 
trade  to  advance  more  prosperously  than  ever,  till  at  length, 
both  politically  and  industrially,  England  rose  to  the  front 
rank  of  European  nations.  It  has  also  been  well  pointed 
out,  that  in  the  three  wars  between  1740  and  1783,  the 
struggle  as  between  England  and  France  was  more  especially 
for  the  New  World.  In  the  first  war  the  issue  was  fairly 
joined  ;  in  the  second  France  suffered  a  fatal  fall ;  in  the 
third,  by  assisting  the  American  States,  she  took  a  signal 
revenge.1  "  This  is  the  grand  chapter  in  the  history  of 
Greater  Britain,  for  it  is  the  first  great  struggle  in  which 
the  (British)  Empire  fights  as  a  whole,  the  colonies  and 
settlements  outside  Europe  being  here  not  merely  dragged 
in  the  wake  of  the  mother  country,  but  actually  taking  the 
lead." 2  To  the  history  of  these  colonial  dependencies  we 
must  now  devote  a  few  words,  beginning  first  with  India. 

§  178.    The  Struggle  for  India. 

Since  the  founding  of  Surat  and  the  acquisition  of 
Bombay,  the  East  India  Company  had  also  founded  two 
forts  or  stations,  which  have  since  become  most  important 
cities,  namely,  Fort  St  George,  now  Madras,  and  Fort 
William,  now  Calcutta.3  They  had  become  powerful,  and 

1  Seeley,  Expansion,  p.  31.  *  /&.,  p.  31. 

*  Macpheraon,  History  of  European  Commerce  with  India,  p.  126. 


294  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

each  of  the  three  chief  stations  had  a  governor  and  a  small 
army.  The  French,  however,  had  also  an  East  India 
Company,1  whose  chief  station  was  Pondicherry,  south  of 
Madras ;  and  the  two  companies  were  by  no  means  on 
friendly  terms.  When  their  respective  nations  were  at  war 
in  174G-48,  they,  too,  had  some  sharp  fighting,  but  it  was 
only  when  Dupleix,2  the  French  Governor  of  Pondicherry, 
had  gained  such  remarkable  influence  in  Southern  India 
about  1748,  that  matters  became  serious.  Dupleix  was 
one  of  the  first  Europeans  who  deliberately  involved  him- 
self in  native  politics  in  order  to  further  his  country's 
interests,  and  he  conceived  the  idea  of  the  conquest  of 
India.  The  English  traders  feared  with  justice  the  loss 
both  of  their  lives  and  commerce,  and  open  war  broke  out. 
The  magnificent  exertions  of  Clive  and  Lawrence,  however, 
defeated  the  French;  Dupleix  was  recalled  in  1754,  arid 
quiet  was  for  a  time  restored.3  But  two  years  afterwards 
the  Seven  Years'  War  broke  out,  and  India  was  disturbed 
again.  Suraj-ud-Daula,  the  ally  of  the  French,  took  Calcutta 
and  committed  the  Black  Hole  atrocity  (1757),  and  he  and 
his  allies  did  their  best  to  drive  the  English  out  of  Bengal.4 
This  province,  however,  was  saved  by  Clive  at  the  battle 
of  Plassey ; 5  Coote  defeated  the  French  at  Wondiwash  or 
Vandivasu  (1700);  and  Pondicherry  was  captured  by  the 
English  in  17G1.6  Finally,  in  1765,  the  East  India  Com- 
pany became  the  collector  of  the  revenues  for  Bengal,  Behar, 
and  Orissa,  and  thus  the  English  power  was  acknowledged 
and  consolidated.7  Our  future  struggles  in  India  were  not 
with  the  French,  but  with  native  princes.  So  completely 
did  the  French  power  decline  that  Napoleon,  when  he  was 
a  young  and  unknown  person,  so  far  from  dreaming  of  the 
conquest  of  India  (as  he  did  later),  actually  thought  of 
entering  the  English  East  India  Company's  service  in  order 

1  It  was  organised  by  Colbert  in  1664,  but  was  very  unsuccessful  at  first; 
Malleson,  French  in  India,  pp.  27,  57. 

2  Of.  Lecky,  History,  ii.  455 ;  cf.  Seeley,  Expansion,  p.  30. 

3  Lecky,  History,  ii.  455,  456.  4  Lecky,  ii.  456,  497. 

6  Lecky,  History,  ii.  498.  6  76. ,  ii.  503. 

7  Ib.,  iii.  478.     See  Lecky's  useful  summary  of  the  conduct  of  the  Com- 
pany in  India. 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR 


295 


to  acquire  the  wealth  of  an  Anglo-Indian  nabob.1  Never- 
theless, for  a  long  time  the  English  were  actuated  in  all 
their  Indian  conduct  and  politics  by  fear  of  the  French. 
"  Behind  every  movement  of  the  native  powers  we  saw 
French  intrigue,  French  gold,  French  ambition ;  and  never, 
until  we  were  masters  of  the  whole  country,  got  rid  of  that 
feeling  that  the  French  were  driving  us  out  of  it,  which  had 
descended  from  the  days  of  Dupleix  and  Labourdonnais."* 
East  and  west  the  duel  with  France  went  on,  and  the 
underlying  cause  of  the  duel  was  the  evergrowing  industrial 
life  of  England  that  burst  forth  into  new  colonial  ventures 
beyond  the  seas. 

§  179.   The  Conquest  of  Canada. 

There  was,  however,  a  great  struggle  for  commercial 
supremacy  to  be  waged  against  the  French  in  America.  It 
began  in  1754.  The  English  had  now  thirteen  flourishing 
colonies  between  the  Alleghany  Mountains  and  the  sea.3 
Behind  them,  above  them,  and  below  them,  all  was  claimed 

1  Jung,  Lucien  Bonaparte  et  ses  M&noires,  i.  74  (Seeley). 

*  Seeley,  Expansion,  p.  30. 

8  The  following  list  may  be  useful ;  and  cf.  Lecky,  History,  ii.  18  377. 


COLOST. 

Date  of 

Foundation. 

How  Founded. 

I.   Virginia  Group  — 
Virginia 
Maryland 

N.  and  8.  Carolina 
Georgia 

1606 
1632 

1663 
1733 

By  the  London  Company 
Charter    given   to    Lord 
Baltimore 
Proprietors 
By  General  Oglethorpe 

II.  New  York  Group  — 
New  York 
New  Jersey 
Delaware 
Pennsylvania 

1664 
1664 
1664 
1682 

j-  Taken  from  the  Dutch 

I'lirchased  by  Wm,  Penn 
from  Charles  II. 

III.   New  England  Group- 
New  Hampshire 
Massachusetts 
Rhode  Island 
Connecticut 

1622 
1628 
1631 
1633 

[  Colonised      by      Puritan 
I      Settlers 

296  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

by  France  as  French  territory.  It  was  inevitable  that  the 
growth  of  our  colonies  should  lead  to  war,  and  such  was 
actually  the  case.  The  French  began  by  driving  out  English 
settlers  from  land  west  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains;  the  Eng- 
lish retorted  by  driving  French  settlers  out  of  Nova  Scotia,  and 
tried  to  make  a  colony  in  the  Ohio  valley.1  In  this  latter 
object  they  were  foiled  by  Duquesne,  the  French  Governor 
of  Canada,  who  built  Fort  Duquesne  there  in  1754.  Shortly 
afterwards,  the  next  Governor,  Montcalm,  conceived  the  idea 
of  linking  together  Forts  Duquesne,  Niagara,  and  Ticonderoga 
by  lesser  forts,  so  as  to  keep  the  English  in  their  narrow 
strip  of  eastern  coast-line.  Then  the  English  Government 
at  home  took  up  the  matter,  and  sent  out  General  Brad- 
dock  with  2000  men  to  help  the  colonists.2  Braddock 
was  defeated3  and  killed  (1755),  but  when  the  Seven 
Years'  War  broke  out  in  the  next  year,  Pitt  sent  ammuni- 
tion, men,  and  money  to  help  the  colonists  to  attack  Quebec 
and  Montreal.4  The  war  was  renewed  in  Canada  with  fresh 
vigour;  Fort  Duquesne  was  captured  in  1758,  Quebec  in 
1759,  and  Montreal  in  1760  ;5  and  when  peace6  was  made 
at  Paris  in  1763,  England  had  gained  all  the  French  pos- 
sessions in  America,  and  her  colonists  were  enabled  to  extend 
as  far  as  they  desired.  We  unfortunately  lost  them  by  a 
&  AD  mistaken  policy  a  few  years  afterwards. 

§  180.  Survey  of  Commercial  Progress  during 
these  Wars. 

We  may  now  make  a  brief  survey  of  our  commercial 
progress  in  the  seventeenth  century.  The  reign  of  James 
I.  was  noticeable  for  the  rapid  growth  of  the  foreign  trade 
which  had  developed  from  the  somewhat  piratical  excursions 
of  the  Elizabethan  sailors.  Trading  companies  were  formed 
in  considerable  numbers,  and  among  them  the  Levant 
Company  may  be  noticed,  as  making  great  profits  in  its 
Eastern  trade.7  The  mercantile  class  was  now  growing 

1  Lecky,  ii.  443.  2  Ib  }  iL  444  3  76.,  iL  446. 

4  Ib.,  ii.  494.  s  /jis  H   495  6  /&  }  ^  46 

7  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  19 ;  cf.  also  Mun,  Discourse  of  Trade  from 
England  to  East  India. 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  297 

both  numerous  and  powerful,  and  a  proof  of  their  advance 
in  social  position  and  influence  is  furnished  by  the  new  title 
of  nobility,  that  of  baronet,  conferred  by  James  I.  upon 
such  merchant  princes  as  were  able  and  willing  to  pay  the 
needy  king  a  good  round  sum  for  the  honour.1  It  is  in- 
teresting, by  the  way,  to  notice  the  figures  of  trade  in  his 
reign.  In  1613  the  exports  and  imports  both  together 
were  about  £4,628,586  in  value,2  and  a  sign  of  a  quickly 
developing  Eastern  trade  is  also  seen  in  the  fact  that  James 
made  attempts  to  check  the  increasing  export  of  silver  from 
the  kingdom.3  At  this  time  English  merchants  traded  not 
only  in  the  East,  but  with  most  of  the  Mediterranean  ports, 
with  Portugal,  Spain,  France,  Hamburg,  and  the  Baltic 
coasts.*  Ships  from  the  north  and  west  of  Europe  used  in 
return  to  visit  the  Newcastle  collieries,  which  were  rapidly 
growing  in  value.5  The  English  ships  were  also  very  active 
in  the  new  cod  fisheries  of  Newfoundland  and  the  Green- 
land whale  fisheries.8  The  development  of  English  trade 
is  signalised  in  this  century  by  the  appearance  of  numerous 
books  and  essays  on  commercial  questions,  of  which  the 
works  of  Mun,  Malynes,  Misselden,  Roberts,  Sir  Josiah 
Child,  Sir  William  Petty,  Worth,  and  Daveuant  may  be 
mentioned  as  among  the  most  important.7  The  increase  in 
the  wealth  of  the  country  is  shown  by  the  rapid  rebuilding 
of  London  after  the  Great  Fire,8  when  the  loss  was  estimated 
at  £12,000,000  ;  and  Sir  Josiah  Child,  writing  in  1665, 
speaks  of  the  great  development  of  the  commerce  and  trade 
of  England  in  the  previous  twenty  years.9  The  East  India 
Company  was  so  flourishing  that  in  1676  their  stock  was 
quoted  at  245  per  cent.10  Trade  witli  America  was  equally 

1  Gardiner,  History,  ii.  112.     The  sum  was  £1080. 

*  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  33. 

3  Heavy  fines  were  imposed  on  foreign  merchants  for  doing  this  in  1619 ; 
Gardiner,  History,  iii.  323. 

4  8«e  Lewes  Roberts,  The  Merchant?  Map  of  Commerce  :  London,  1638 ; 
passim  and  especially  Ft.  ii.  p.  257. 

6  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  140.  •  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  29. 

7  See  Palgrave's  new  Dictionary  of  Pol.  Economy  for  these. 

8  Craik,  British  Commerce  (quoting  Child),  ii.  83. 

•  Child,  New  Discourse  on  Trade,  written  in  1666,  and  published  in  1668. 
10  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  101. 


298  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

prosperous.  New  Amsterdam,  now  New  York,  was  taken 
from  the  Dutch1  in  1664,  and  in  1670  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  received  their  charter.  But  the  main  commercial 
fact  of  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  of 
the  eighteenth,  was  the  development  of  the  Eastern  trade, 
and,  as  a  consequence,  of  the  home  production  of  articles 
to  be  exchanged  for  Eastern  goods.2  English  ships  went  as 
far  as  India,  to  Arabia  and  to  Africa,  and  traded  with  the 
Spanish  colonies  in  the  New  World.  The  cloth  trade 
especially  was  greatly  increased,3  and  imports  of  cloth  from 
abroad  were  almost  superseded.  This  improvement  in 
English  manufactures  led  to  increased  trade  with  our  colonial 
possessions,  especially  in  the  West  Indies.4  It  was  partly, 
perhaps,  this  great  development  of  English  trade  with 
both  the  Western  and  the  Eastern  markets  that  stimulated 
the  genius  of  the  great  inventors  to  supply  our  manu- 
facturers with  machinery  that  would  enable  them  to  meet 
the  huge  demands  upon  their  powers  of  production,  for,  by 
1760,  the  export  trade  had  grown  to  many  times  its  value 
in  the  days  of  James  I.  Then,  as  we  saw,  it  was  only 
some  £2,000,000  per  annum;  in  1703,  nearly  a  hundred 
years  later,  it  was,  according  to  an  MS.  of  Daven ant's,5 
£6,552,019;  by  1760  it  reached  £14,500,000.6  The 
markets,  too,  had  undergone  a  change.  We  no  longer 
exported  so  largely  to  Holland,7  Portugal,  and  France,  as 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  but  instead,  one-third  of  our 
exports  went  to  our  colonies.8  In  1770,  for  example, 
America  took  three-fourths  of  the  manufactures  of  Man- 

1  Anderson,  Chron.  Deduct.  Commerce,  ii.  479,  and  for  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Co. ,  cf.  Anderson,  ii.  514. 

2  Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation  of  History,  p.  288. 

3  In  1699  the  woollen  cloth  manufacture  formed  between  a  half  and  a 
third  of  the  total  exports  (£2,932,292  out  of  £6,788,166).      Davenant, 
Second  Report  to  Commissioners  of  Public  Accounts  ;   Works,  v.  460. 

*  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  137. 

6  Quoted  in  Toynbee,  Industrial  devolution,  p.  56,  note.  Craik,  British 
Commerce,  ii.  155,  gives  £6,644,103,  also  from  Davenant.  But  the  figures 
are  nearly  the  same. 

6  The  exact  figure  (Craik,  British  Commerce,  iii.  10)  was  £15,781,175, 
but  of  this  £1,086,205  came  from  Scotland. 

7  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  155. 

8  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  57- 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  299 

Chester,1  and  Jamaica  alone  took  almost  as  much  of  our 
manufactures  as  all  our  plantations  together  had  done  in 
the  beginning  of  the  century.2 

§  181.   Commercial  Events  of  the  Seventeenth  Century. 

This  is  not  a  history  of  Commerce,  and,  therefore,  any 
mention  of  commercial  facts  must  here  be  brief.8  But  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  are  so  marked  by 
commercial  progress,  and  are  so  crowded  with  important 
mercantile  events,  that  we  must  pause  to  notice  a  few  of 
the  most  remarkable  of  them.  Among  these  we  may  place 
the  humble  origin  of  that  marvellous  system  of  banking, 
which  is  at  once  the  basis  and  the  apex  of  the  modern 
mercantile  fabric.  Banking  first  seems  to  have  assumed 
the  importance  of  a  regular  business  in  England  early  in 
the  seventeenth  or  late  in  the  sixteenth  century.  It  was 
carried  on  especially  by  goldsmiths,4  who  often  advanced 
money  to  the  sovereign  upon  the  security  of  taxes  or  personal 
credit  A  pamphlet  of  1676,  called  The  Mystery  of  the 
Newfashioned  Goldsmiths  or  Bankers  Discovered,  shows 
how  banking  and  money-lending  had  become  a  regular 
business,  and  gives  the  year  1645  as  about  the  time  when 
commercial  men  began  regularly  to  put  their  cash  in  the 
hands  of  goldsmiths.  It  also  states  that  "  the  greatest  of 
them  (i.e.,  of  the  goldsmiths)  were  enabled  to  supply  Crom- 
well with  money  in  advance  upon  the  revenues,  as  his 
occasions  required,  at  great  advantage  to  themselves." 
Similarly  the  famous  goldsmith,  George  Heriot,6  had  fre- 
quently obliged  James  I.  It  is  well  known  how  the 
London  goldsmiths  advanced  Charles  II.  as  much  as 
£1,300,000,  at  8  to  10  per  cent,  interest,  upon  the 
security  of  the  taxes;  and  how  (in  1672)  he  suddenly  re- 
fused to  repay  the  principal,  saying  they  must  be  content 

1  Young,  Northern  Tour,  iii.  194. 

8  Burke,  Works,  i.  278. 

8  I  have  treated  the  strictly  commercial  facts  in  another  volume,  British 
Commerce  and  Colonies,  from  Elizabeth  to  Victoria. 

4  See  my  article  on  Ootflrniitht1  notes  in  Palgrave's  Dictionary  of  Political 
Economy. 

8  Cf.  the  excellent  note  (B)  to  Sir  Walter  Scott's  Fortunes  of  Nigel. 


300  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

with  the  interest,  and  closed  the  exchequer,  thus  causing  a 
serious  commercial  panic.1 

The  unsatisfactory  method  of  obtaining  loans  from  gold- 
smiths and  other  private  persons  was  partly  the  cause  of 
William  Paterson's  project 2  of  founding  what  is  now  known 
as  the  Bank  of  England  (1694).  Paterson  offered  to  pro- 
vide the  Government  of  William  III.  with  £1,200,000,  to 
be  repaid  by  taxation  on  beer  or  other  liquors,  and  by  rates 
on  shipping,  while  those  who  subscribed  this  money  were 
incorporated  into  a  regular  company,  which  was  to  receive 
8  per  cent,  interest,  and  also  £4000  a  year  for  management.3 
Thus  the  matter  of  loans  was  first  placed  upon  a  proper 
basis,  while  the  Bank  thus  formed,  and  supported  by 
Government  credit,  took  at  once  a  leading  position  in  Eng- 
lish commerce.  The  loan  just  mentioned  4  was  the  begin- 
ning of  a  regular  National  Debt,  which  may  be  briefly 
defined  as  the  system  of  contracting  loans  upon  the  security 
of  the  supplies  or  upon  Government  credit,  and  of  paying 
them  off  gradually  in  succeeding  generations.6 

The  Restoration  of  the  Currency  was  another  event  of 
historical  importance.  It  was  due  to  Montague,  the  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer.  Although,  as  we  saw,  Elizabeth 
had  reformed  the  standard  of  the  coinage,  yet,  up  to  the 
time  of  Charles  II.,  silver  money  was  made  by  simply 
cutting  the  metal  with  shears,  and  shaping  and  stamping  it 
with  a  hammer.  It  was  thus  quite  easy  to  clip  or  shear 
the  coins  again  without  being  detected,  and  then  pass  them 
off  to  an  unsuspecting  person  for  their  full  amount.  So 
the  coins  became  smaller  and  smaller,  and  people  often 
found,  on  presenting  them  at  a  bank  or  elsewhere,  that  they 
were  only  worth  half  their  nominal  value.  At  first,  under 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  223. 

2  Of.  Paterson's  own  Account  of  Transactions  in  relation  to  the  Bank  of 
England,  1695 ;  and  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  124 ;  also  (for  Paterson) 
Macaulay,  History,  ch.  xxiv. 

3  Craik,  u.  a.,  ii.  125;  Anderson,  Chron.  Comm.,  ii.  604;  also  Rogers, 
First  Nine  Years  of  the  Bank  of  England,  should  be  referred  to. 

4  Strictly  speaking,  the  money  stolen  by  Charles  II.  from  the  goldsmiths 
was  the  first  debt,  but  it  was  not  included  till  later.    Cunningham,  Growth 
of  Industry,  ii.  223. 

8  Gf.  Cunningham,  u.  s.,  ii.  403;  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.,  449. 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  301 

Charles  II.,  it  was  thought  sufficient  to  issue  new  coins  with 
a  ribbed  or  "  milled  "  edge,  but  the  only  result  of  this  was 
that  the  good  coin  was  melted  or  exported,  and  (as  is  always 
the  case)  the  inferior  money  remained  at  home.  It  was 
then  seen,  by  Montague  and  Sir  Isaac  Newton  (the  Master 
of  the  Mint),  that  the  only  way  was  to  call  in  the  old  coin- 
age, and  issue  an  entirely  new  and  true  milled  currency. 
The  expenses  of  this  recoinage,  which  cost  some  two  and  a 
half  millions,  were  defrayed  by  a  tax  on  window-panes.1 

§  182.   Other  Important  Commercial  Events. 

Among  the  important  commercial  events  of  this  period, 
one  ought  certainly  to  include  the  Darien  Scheme  and  the 
Union  of  England  and  Scotland,  although  these  belong 
more  fitly  to  a  history  of  Commerce  than  of  Industry. 
The  Darien  Scheme  was  a  project  originated  by  William 
Paterson,  the  founder  of  the  Bank  of  England,  who  pro- 
posed to  colonise  the  Isthmus  of  Darien,  and  use  it  as  "  the 
key  of  the  Indies  and  door  of  the  world  "  for  commerce.2 
English  capitalists,  however,  would  not  support  his  scheme, 
and  it  was  denounced  by  the  English  Parliament.  Never- 
theless, a  company  was  formed  in  Scotland,  called  "  The 
Scottish  African  and  Indian  Company,"  a  charter  was  given 
it  by  the  Scotch  Parliament  in  1695,  and  a  capital  of 
£900,000  was  ultimately  raised,  £400,000  coming  from 
Scotland,  then  a  very  poor  country,  and  the  rest  from 
English  and  Dutch  merchants.  The  hostility  of  the  East 
India  Company,  the  Levant  Company,  and  of  the  Dutch  in 
general,  however,  never  ceased,  and  it  was  owing  to  their 
influence  that,  when  the  ill-fated  colony  at  last  set  out  for 
Darien  in  July  1698,  the  settlers  were  left  quite  unaided 
against  the  attacks  of  the  Spaniards,  who  claimed  the 
monopoly  of  South  American  trade.  In  fact,  Spanish 
attacks  and  the  climate,  so  utterly  unsuited  for  European 
colonists,  sealed  the  fate  of  the  expedition,  and  few  who 
went  out  ever  returned.  This  failure  had  the  most  serious 

1  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.,  p.  200 ;  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  127. 
8  For  an  account  of  this  Company  see  Burton's  History  of  Kcoilnnd,  ch. 
viii.,  and  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  ch.  xxiv. 


302  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

effect  in  impoverishing  the  Scotch,  who  could  then  ill  afford 
the  loss,  but  there  is  little  doubt  that  it  greatly  helped  to 
bring  about  the  subsequent  Act  of  Union  1  between  England 
and  Scotland,  in  which  William  Paterson  was  largely  con- 
cerned (1707).  The  Union  proved  of  considerable  benefit 
to  Scotland,  as  by  it  trade  between  the  two  countries  be- 
came free,  English  ports  and  colonies  were  thrown  open  to 
the  Scotch,  and  Scotland  found  a  large  market  for  woollen 
and  linen  goods  and  cattle  in  England. 

The  woollen  cloth  trade  had  now  assumed  such  proportions 
as  to  make  it  worth  while  to  attempt  to  help  it  forward  still 
more  by  a  commercial  treaty.  This  treaty  is  important  mainly 
because  at  the  time  it  was  regarded  as  a  monument  of  economic 
wisdom.2  The  date  of  the  Methuen  Treaty  is  1703,  and  it  was 
arranged  by  John  Methuen  between  England  and  Portugal. 
It  was  agreed  that  British  woollen  goods  should  be  admitted 
into  Portugal  and  her  colonies,  provided  that  at  all  times 
Portuguese  wines  were  admitted  into  England  at  two-thirds 
of  the  duty  (whatever  it  might  be)  levied  on  French  wines. 
The  result  was  a  considerable  increase  of  trade  with  Portugal, 
but  an  even  greater  decrease  of  trade  with  France,3  while  the 
wine-drinking  of  our  upper  classes  took  a  very  different 
direction,  for  port,  which  had  hitherto  been  almost  unknown 
in  England,  became  the  typical  drink  of  the  English  gentle- 
man, and  more  port  was  sent  to  the  United  Kingdom  than 
to  all  the  rest  of  Europe  together.4  It  was  not  till  the 
time  of  the  commercial  treaty  of  1860  with  France  that 
the  heavy  duties  on  light  French  wines  were  reduced,  and 
with  them  the  duties  on  French  manufactures.5  Till  then, 
as  Gladstone  said  in  his  speech  on  the  subject  in  1862, 
"  it  was  almost  thought  a  matter  of  duty  to  regard  French- 
men as  traditional  enemies,"  not  only  in  politics,  but  in  com- 
merce. This  French  treaty  was  only  one  among  the  many 
and  great  services  of  Cobden  to  the  commerce  of  his  country.6 

1  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  183 ;  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry, 
ii.  411. 

2  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  165.  3  Ib.,  ii.  166. 

4  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  135. 

5  The  Methuen  Treaty  itself  lasted  till  1831.     Craik,  u.  s.,  ii.  165. 
8  Morley,  Life  of  Cobden,  ch.  xxvii. 


COMMERCE  AND  WAR  303 

It  is  noticeable  that  in  this  period  commerce  takes  an 
entirely  modern  tone.  We  have  seen  this  in  the  case  of 
banking,  of  national  finance,  and  of  commercial  policy.  We 
now  notice  it  also  in  the  growth  of  speculation ;  for  the 
eighteenth  century  is  distinguished  by  its  mania  for  com- 
mercial gambling.  It  is  the  era  in  which  the  modern 
company  promoter  makes  his  first  appearance.  Many 
companies  were  started,  far  too  numerous  to  mention  here, 
their  promotion  being  due  partly  no  doubt  to  the  fact 
that  those  who  had  hoarded  their  money  during  the 
previous  wars  were,  in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  anxious  to  make  profitable  use  of  it.  Of  these 
new  companies  the  most  famous  was  the  South  Sea  Com- 
pany, formed  in  171 1  to  trade  with  South  America,  but  after- 
wards partaking  more  of  the  nature  of  a  financial  company. 
The  directors  anticipated  enormous  profits,  and  offered  to 
advance  the  Government  £7,500,000  to  pay  off  part  of  the 
National  Debt1  Every  one  knows  the  story  of  their  col- 
lapse (1721),  and  the  ruin  it  brought  upon  thousands  of 
worthy  but  credulous  shareholders.  But  though  the  most 
famous,  it  was  by  no  means  the  only,  or  even  the  first,  pro- 
ject of  its  kind  ; 2  for  this  was  a  time  when  all  the  accumu- 
lated capital  of  the  country  seemed  to  run  riot  in  hopes  of 
gaining  profits.  Hundreds  of  smaller  companies  were 
started  every  day,  and  an  unhealthy  excitement  prevailed.8 
One  company,  with  a  capital  of  £3,000,000,  was  started 
"  for  insuring  to  all  masters  and  mistresses  the  losses  they 
may  sustain  by  servants  "  ;  another  "  for  making  salt-water 
fresh  "  ;  a  third  for  "  planting  mulberry  trees  and  breeding 
silk-worms  in  Chelsea  Park."  One  in  particular  was  de- 
signed for  importing  "  a  number  of  large  jackasses  from  Spain 
in  order  to  propagate  a  larger  kind  of  mule  in  England," 
as  if,  remarks  a  later  writer  with  some  severity,  there  were 
not  already  jackasses  enough  in  London  alone.4 

All  this  mania  for  investing  capital,  however,  shows  how 

1  Cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  190,  and  Anderson,  Chron,  Commerce, 
ii.  614. 
8  Cf.  Defoe's  Essay  on  Projects  (1697),  especially  pp.  11  to  13. 

*  Cf.  Craik  and  Anderson,  u.  s. 

*  Ib,,  also  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  316. 


304  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

prosperous  England  had  now  become,  and  how  great  a  quantity 
of  wealth  had  been  accumulated,  partly  by  trade,  but  also 
by  the  growth  of  manufactures,  and  by  improvements  in 
agriculture.  Englishmen  now  felt  strong  enough  to  begin 
another  struggle  for  the  monopoly  of  trade,1  with  the  result 
that  fresh  wars  were  undertaken,  and  the  country  was 
heavily  burdened  with  debt.  But  the  wars  were,  on  the 
whole,  a  success,  though  the  wish  for  a  monopoly  was  a 
mistake.  We  see,  in  fact,  from  this  brief  review,  that  the 
prosperity  and  development  of  modern  English  commerce, 
as  we  know  it,  had  now  begun.  It  was  due,  of  course,  not 
to  the  great  wars  we  had  waged  for  the  right  of  a  sole 
market,  but  to  the  fact  that  we  were  able  to  supply  the 
markets  of  the  world  with  manufactured  goods  which  no 
other  country  could  then  produce.2  How  we  were  able  to 
do  so  will  shortly  be  seen,  when  we  come  to  speak  of  the 
Industrial  Revolution  of  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Meanwhile,  we  will  glance  at  the  state  of  our 
manufacturing  industries  in  the  period  before  this  great 
change. 

1  On  the  "  sole  market "  theory,  see  Rogers,  Econ.  Interp.,  323. 

2  This  was  due  very  largely  to  the  political  troubles  of  other  countries 
Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation,  p.  289 ;  and  below,  p.  358. 


CHAPTER  XTX 

MANUFACTURES    AND    MINING 

§  183.  Circumstances  Favourable  to  English 
Manufactures. 

IT  has  been  frequently  remarked  in  previous  chapters  that 
Flanders  was  the  great  manufactory  of  Europe  throughout 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  up  to  the  sixteenth  century.  Her 
competition  would  in  any  case  have  been  sufficient  to  check 
much  export  of  manufactured  goods  from  England,  though 
we  had  by  the  sixteenth  century  got  past  the  time  when 
most  of  our  imports  of  clothing  came  from  Flanders.  But, 
at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  Flemish  competition 
was  practically  annihilated,  owing  to  the  ravages  made  in 
the  Low  Countries  by  the  Spanish  persecutions  and  occupa- 
tion.1 But  England  did  not  benefit  merely  by  the  cessation 
of  Flemish  competition :  she  received  at  the  same  time 
hundreds  of  Flemish  immigrants,2  who  greatly  improved 
our  home  manufactures,  and  thus  our  prosperity  was  doubly 
assisted.  The  result  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  our  export  of 
wool  diminished,  while  the  export  of  cloth  increased,  till  at 
the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  woollen  goods  formed 
two-thirds  of  our  total  exports.3 

§  184.    Wool  Trade.     Home  Manufactures.     Dyeing. 

In  the  reign  of  James  I.  the  wool  trade  is  even  said  to  have 
declined,4  and  certainly  we  know  that  little  wool  can  have 
been  exported,  for  nearly  all  that  produced  in  England  was 
used  for  home  manufacture.  On  the  other  hand,  however, 
the  same  fact  shows  that  the  manufacturing  industry  was 

1  Above,  p.  230.  8  Above,  pp.  221,  230. 

8  Davenant,  Of  Gain  in  Trade  (1699),  p.  47. 

*  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  34,  who  thinks  the  decline  partly  due  to 
the  effeote  of  the  monopoly  granted  to  Cockayne. 

U  3°5 


306  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

rising  in  importance,  for  it  required  all  the  home-grown 
wool  that  could  be  got;  and,  in  1648,  and  again  in  1660, 
the  export  of  British  wool  was  for  this  reason  forbidden,1 
and  remained  so  till  1825.  The  woollen  cloth  trade  was 
very  largely  in  the  hands  of  the  Merchant  Adventurers,2 
against  whose  methods  serious  complaints  were  sometimes 
made,3  but  the  manufacturing  industry  flourished  steadily, 
and  a  considerable  part  of  the  population  was  now  engaged 
in  it.  The  usefulness  of  our  climate,  too,  for  this  particular 
manufacture  had  been  discovered,  and  was  now  recognised,4 
while  the  manufacturing  industry  was  likewise  aided  by 
the  impetus  given  to  dyeing  by  the  exertions  of  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh.  Previously  to  James  I.'s  reign  most  English  goods 
had  to  be  sent  to  the  Netherlands  to  be  dyed,5  as  was  ex- 
plained above;  but  Raleigh6  called  attention  to  this  fact,  and 
proposed  to  grant  a  monopoly  for  the  art  of  dyeing  and  dress- 
ing. It  was  by  his  advice  that  the  export  of  English  white 
goods  was7  prohibited  (1608),  a  proceeding  which  caused 
considerable  discussion  and  controversy.8  At  the  same  time 
a  monopoly  was  granted  to  Sir  William  Cockayne,  giving 
him  the  exclusive  right  of  dyeing  and  dressing  all  woollen 
cloths.9  But  the  Dutch  and  German  cities  immediately 
retaliated  by  prohibiting  the  import  of  any  dyed  cloths 
from  England,  and  great  confusion  arose.  "  Cockayne  was 
disabled  from  selling  his  cloth  anywhere  but  at  home, 
beside  that  his  cloths  were  worse  done,  and  yet  were  dearer, 
than  those  finished  in  Holland.  There  was  a  very  great 
clamour,  therefore,  raised  against  this  new  project  by  the 
weavers  now  employed,  so  that  the  king  was  obliged  to 

1  Scobell,  Acts,  i.  138,  and  the  12  Charles  II.,  c.  32. 

2  Of.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  120. 

3  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  35. 

*  Bishop  Burnet  remarked  this  to  Davenant ;  Davenant,  Works,  ii.  235. 

5  Gardiner,  History,  ii.  386. 

6  Observations  concerning  the  Trade  and  Commerce  of  England  with  the 
Dutch  and  other  Foreign  Nations ;  cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  9-12 ; 
Smith,  Memoirs  of  Wool,  ch.  xxx. ,  xxxi. 

7  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  33. 

8  Smith,  Memoirs  of  Wool,  ch.  xxxi.-xxxvi. 

'  Gardiner,  History,  ii.  386,  387  ;  Smith.  Memoirs  of  Wool,  ch.  xxxi.  and 
notes.  It  seems  doubtful  whether  Cockayne's  patent  was  granted  in 
1608-9  or  1616  ;  see  Smith,  u.  s. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  MINING          307 

permit  the  exportation  of  a  limited  quantity  of  white  cloths ; 
and  a  few  years  after  (1615)  for  quieting  the  people  he 
found  himself  under  the  necessity  of  annulling  Cockayne's 
patent."  * 

Thus  the  monopoly  failed  in  its  object,  as  such  attempts 
usually  do,  but  still  it  is  worth  noticing  as  an  instance  of 
what  was  then  the  universal  policy  of  subjecting  industry 
to  various  regulations,  either  for  the  benefit  of  those  con- 
cerned in  the  industry  itself,  or  because  it  was  thought 
that  benefit  might  accrue  to  the  State  in  general.2  The 
regulation  of  industry  was,  in  fact,  regarded  as  quite  right 
and  necessary,  either  for  purely  political  purposes,8  or  to 
maintain  the  quality  of  manufactures ;  and  though  in 
modern  times  the  tendency  has  rather  been  to  get  rid  of 
State  regulation  altogether,  there  are  still  a  fair  number  of 
cases  where  industry  is  more  or  less  supervised  by  the  State 
for  the  good  of  the  community.4 

§  185.   Other  Influences  Favourable  to  England.      The 
Huguenot  Immigration. 

But  other  influences  were  at  work  in  the  seventeenth 
century  in  favour  of  our  home  industries.  It  becomes  more 
and  more  apparent  that  our  insular  position  was  specially 
suitable  for  the  development  of  manufactures  as  soon  as 
they  made  a  fair  start.  Except  for  the  Parliamentary  War, 
which  did  not  disturb  the  industry  of  the  country  very 
much — for  there  is  no  sign  of  undue  exaltation  of  prices,  or 
anything  else  that  points  to  commercial  distress  6 — England 
was  free  from  the  terrible  conflicts  that  desolated  half 
Europe  in  the  Thirty  Years'  War.  Our  own  Civil  War 
was  conducted  with  hardly  any  of  the  bloodshed,  plunder, 
and  rapine  that  make  war  so  disastrous.  But  the  Thirty 
Years'  War  (1619-1648)  did  not  cease  till  the  utter  ex- 
haustion of  the  combatants  made  peace  inevitable,  and  till 
every  leader  who  had  taken  part  in  the  beginning  of  the 

1  Anderson,  Chron.  Deduct.  Commerce,  ii.  232. 

2  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  167. 

3  E.g.,  the  export  of  bullion  was  prohibited  for  political  reasons. 

4  The  Factory  Acts  of  the  nineteenth  century  are  an  instance  of  this. 
«  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  4.T2,  says  agriculture  even  progressed. 


3o8  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

struggle  was  in  his  grave.  Germany  was  effectually  ruined,1 
and  with  Germany  and  Flanders  laid  low,  England  had 
little  to  fear  from  foreign  competition.  And  just  at  this 
moment  the  folly  of  our  neighbour,  the  French  King  Louis 
XIV.,  induced  him  to  deprive  his  nation  of  most  of  its 
skilled  workmen  by  the  Eevocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes. 
His  loss  was  our  gain.  The  Edict  in  question,  passed 
nearly  a  century  previously,  had  insured  freedom  of  worship 
to  the  French  Huguenots,  who  comprised  in  their  ranks  the 
dite  of  the  industrial  population.  Louis  XIV.2  set  to  work 
to  exterminate  the  Protestant  religion  in  France,  and  be- 
gan by  revoking  this  Edict  (1685).  Once  more  England 
profited  by  her  Protestantism,  and,  owing  to  the  religious 
opinions  of  her  people,  received  a  fresh  accession  of  in- 
dustrial strength.  Some  thousands  of  skilled  Huguenot 
artisans  and  manufacturers  came  over  and  settled  in  this 
land.3  They  greatly  improved  the  silk,  glass,  and  paper 
trades,4  and  exercised  considerable  influence  in  the  develop- 
ment of  domestic  manufactures  generally.  It  is  said  that 
the  immigrants  numbered  50,000  souls,  with  a  capital  of 
some  £3,000,000.5  Every  one  knows  how  they  introduced 
the  silk  industry  into  this  country,  and  how  Spitalfields 
long  remained  a  colony  of  Huguenot  silk-weavers.6  Their 
descendants  are  to  be  found  in  every  part  of  England. 

§  186.  Distribution  of  the  Cloth  Trade. 

From  this  time  forward  the  cloth  trade,  in  especial,  took 
its  place  among  the  chief  industries  of  the  country,  largely 
owing  to  the  fresh  spirit  infused  into  it,  first  by  Flemish,  and 
afterwards  by  French  weavers.  We  have  already  seen  where 
it  chiefly  flourished  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies, and  now  it  became  more  and  more  widely  distributed.7 

1  Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation  of  History,  287. 

2  See  Voltaire,  Siede  de  Louis  XIV.,  ch.  xxxii. 

3  Cf.  Anderson,  Chron.  Deduct.  Commerce,  ii.  568. 

4  Ib.,  ii.  569.  s  Ib.,  ii.  569. 

6  Voltaire,   Siede  de  Louis  XIV.,  ch.   xxxii. ;  Lecky,   History  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  i.  191. 

7  For  the  following  details,  c/.  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  95,  and  the  Act 
4  and  5  James  L ,  c.  2. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  MINING          309 

The  county  of  Kent,  and  the  towns  of  York  and  Read- 
ing, made  one  kind  of  cloth  of  a  heavy  texture,  the 
piece  being  thirty  or  thirty-four  yards  long  by  six  and 
one-half  broad,  and  weighing  66  Ibs.  to  the  piece. 
Worcester,  Hereford,  and  Coventry  made  a  lighter  kind  of 
fabric,  while  throughout  the  eastern  counties  of  Norfolk, 
Suffolk,  and  Essex  were  made  cloths  of  various  kinds — 
plunkets,  azures,  blues,  long  cloth,  bay,  say,  and  serges  ; 
Suffolk,  in  particular,  made  a  "  fine,  short,  white  cloth." 
Wiltshire  and  Somerset  made  plunkets  and  handy  warps ; 
Yorkshire,  short  cloths.  Broad-listed  whites  and  reds,  and 
fine  cloths,  also  came  from  Wiltshire,  Gloucestershire,  and 
Oxfordshire  ;  and  Somerset  was  famous  in  the  eastern  part 
for  narrow-listed  whites  and  reds,  and  in  the  west  for 
"  dunsters."  Devonshire  made  kerseys  and  grays,  as  also 
did  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire.  The  Midlands  furnished 
"  Penistone  "  cloths  and  "  Forest  whites "  ;  while  West- 
moreland was  the  seat  of  the  manufacture  of  the  famous 
"  Kendal  green  "  cloths,  as  also  of  "  Carpmael  "  and  "  Cog- 
ware  "  fabrics.1  It  will  be  seen  that  the  manufacture  was 
exceedingly  extensive,  and  that  special  fabrics  derived  their 
names  from  the  chief  centre  where  they  were  made.  It 
may  be  mentioned  here,  too,  that  the  value  of  wool  shorn 
in  England  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  was 
£2,000,000,  from  about  12,000,000  sheep  (according  to 
Davenant 2) ;  and  the  cloth  manufactured  from  it  was 
valued  at  about  £8,000,000.  Nearly  half  a  century 
later  (1741)  the  number  of  sheep  was  reckoned8  at 
17,000,000,  the  value  of  wool  shorn  at  £3,000,000, 
and  of  wool  manufactured  at  £8,000,000,  showing  that 
progress  in  invention  had  not  done  much  to  enhance  the 
value  of  the  manufactured  article.  But  in  1774,  when 
the  Industrial  Revolution  may  be  said  to  have  fairly  begun, 
the  value  of  manufactured  wool  was  £13,000,000,  the 
value  of  raw  wool  (£4,500,000)  being  smaller  in  pro- 
portion.* 

1  Cf.  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  95,  and  the  Act  4  and  5  Jaincn  I.,  o.  2. 

2  Davenant,  Discourse  on  the  East  India  Trade  ;  Work*,  ii.  146. 

3  Burnley,  Wool  aiul  Wodcombing,  p.  79.  *  /&. 


3io  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§  187.   Coal  Mines. 

Turning  now  from  textile  manufactures  to  mining  and 
working  in  metals,  we  find  that  in  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  England  was  just  upon  the  eve  of 
the  most  important  changes  in  these  industries — changes 
which,  in  many  places,  have  entirely  transformed  the  face 
of  the  country,  and  have  equally  transformed  the  conditions 
of  industry,  and  with  them  the  social  life  of  the  working 
classes.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  in  its  effects,  both 
for  good  and  evil,  hardly  any  other  historical  event  has  been 
of  so  much  importance  as  the  modern  improvements  in  coal- 
mining. But  it  cannot  be  too  clearly  understood  that  none 
of  our  mining  and  mineral  industries  attained  any  propor- 
tions worth  speaking  of  till  what  is  known  as  the  Industrial 
Revolution.  Englishmen  seem  to  have  had  hardly  any  idea 
of  the  vast  wealth  of  coal  and  iron  that  has  placed  them  in 
the  forefront  of  Europe  as  a  manufacturing  nation.  Never- 
theless we  may  just  glance  at  the  imperfect  methods  which 
our  forefathers  used  up  till  the  eighteenth  century.  Coal- 
mining had  been  carried  on  fairly  extensively  by  the 
Romans,  as,  for  instance,  the  discovery  of  coal  cinders  at 
Aston1  and  other  places  testifies.  Then,  like  all  our  in- 
dustries, it  was  almost  entirely  given  up,  and  it  was  due 
to  the  Norman  Conquest  that  coal-mining  was  revived. 
That  it  was  practised  to  some  extent  in  the  North  is  seen 
from  an  entry  in  the  Boldean  Book  (a  kind  of  Domesday 
of  the  county  of  Durham,  composed  in  1183),  in  which  a 
smith  is  allowed  twelve  acres  of  land  for  making  the  iron- 
work of  the  carts,  and  has  to  provide  his  own  coal.2  But 
collieries  were  not  opened  at  Newcastle  till  the  thirteenth 
century,3  in  the  year  1238.  In  the  next  year  we  find 
notice  of  the  first  public  recognition  of  coal  as  an  article 
of  commerce,  and  from  a  charter  of  Henry  III.  to  the 
freemen  of  Newcastle,  we  may  date  the  foundation  of  the 
coal  trade.*  In  1273  this  had  become  sufficiently  extensive 
for  the  use  of  coal  to  be  forbidden  in  London,  as  there  was 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  174. 

2  Yeats,  Technical  History  of  Commerce,  p.  171. 
3Ib.,p.  172.  «/6. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  MINING          311 

a  prejudice  against  it  and  in  favour  of  wood  as  fuel.1  In 
the  fourteenth  century,  again,  the  monks  of  Tynemouth 
Priory  engaged  in  mining  speculation,  and  (1380)  leased 
a  colliery2  for  £5.  In  the  fifteenth  century  trade  was 
sufficiently  important  to  form  a  source  of  revenue,  for  a  tax 
of  twopence  per  chaldron  was  placed  upon  sea-borne  coal, 
and  in  1421  an  Act  had  to  be  passed  to  enforce  this  tax.8 
In  fact,  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  coal-mining, 
although  in  a  rather  primitive  fashion,  became  general  in 
Great  Britain. 

§  188.   Development  of  Coal  Trade:  Seventeenth  and 
Eighteenth  Centuries. 

By  the  seventeenth  century  it  had  also  become  impor- 
tant— important  enough  for  the  needy  Stuart  monarch 
Charles  I.  to  see  in  it  a  chance  of  revenue.  This  king 
gave  to  Sir  Thomas  Tempest  and  his  partners  the  monopoly 
of  the  sale  of  Newcastle  coal  for  twenty-one  years,4  be- 
ginning in  1637,  and  next  year  he  allowed  a  syndicate  to 
be  incorporated  which  was  to  buy  up  all  the  coal  from  New- 
castle, Sunderland,  and  Berwick,  and  sell  it  in  London  for 
"  not  more  than  1 7s.  a  ton  in  summer,  and  1 9s.  in  winter  " 
— an  extravagant  price  for  those  times.  The  king  got 
a  shilling  a  ton  out  of  this  ingenious  scheme,6  until 
the  Long  Parliament  finally  put  a  stop  to  this  outrageous 
monopoly.  Yet  the  coal  trade  still  formed  a  favourite 
source  of  revenue,  and  the  charge  of  re-erecting  public 
buildings  was  defrayed  by  an  additional  custom  on  coals.8 
It  was  said  that  early  in  the  seventeenth  century  the  New- 
castle trade  alone  employed  four  hundred  vessels.7 

But  although  the  coal  trade  was  fairly  extensive  for  that 
period,  it  was  utterly  insignificant  compared  with  its  present 
dimensions,  and  that  for  a  very  good  reason.  There  was  no 

1  Yeats,  Technical  History  of  Commerce,  p.  172.     Sea-coal  is  found  to 
have  been  brought  as  far  south  as  Dover  an  early  as  1279  ;   cf.  Rogers, 
Hist.  Agric.,  i.  422,  and  ii.  394-397. 

2  Yeats,  Technical  History,  p.  172.  •  Cf.  Act  9  Henry  V.,  c.  10. 
4  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  164.               *  Ib. 

9  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  175. 
7  Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  32. 


3i2  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

means  of  pumping  water  out  of  the  mines,  except  by  the 
old-fashioned  air-pump,  which  was,  of  course,  utterly  inade- 
quate. Nor  was  a  suitable  invention  discovered  till  the 
very  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  when  Thomas  Savery, 
in  1698,  invented  a  kind  of  pump,  worked  by  the  con- 
densation of  steam.1  This  rather  clumsy  invention,  how- 
ever, was  soon  superseded  in  1 70 5  by  Newcomen's  steam 
pump.2  But  it  was  not  till  after  the  commencement  of  the 
Industrial  Revolution  that  steam  power  was  scientifically 
applied  to  coal-mines  by  the  inventions  of  Watt  and  Boulton 
(1765  and  1774),  which  we  shall  notice  in  their  proper 
place.3  Up  to  that  time,  also,  it  was  difficult  to  transport 
coal  into  inland  districts  by  road,  Newcastle  coal  being 
carried  to  London  in  ships,  and  then  carried  up  inland 
rivers  in  barges.  But  these  barges  could  not  go  high  up 
many  rivers  at  that  time,  and  canals  were  not  yet  made. 
It  was  difficult,  for  instance,  to  get  coal  to  Oxford,  for  it 
had  first  to  come  to  London,  then  part  of  the  way  up  the 
Thames,  which  was  not  then  navigable  so  far  as  Oxford, 
and  then  by  road.  But  at  Cambridge  it  was  easily  pro- 
curable, for  barges  could  come  right  up  to  the  town  from 
eastern  ports.  Hence  it  was  much  cheaper  at  Cambridge 
than  at  Oxford.4 

§  189.   The  Iron  Trade. 

As  it  had  been  with  coal,  so  with  iron.  Only  very  small 
quantities  of  it  were  mined  in  the  Middle  Ages  ;  it  was 
smelted  only  by  wood,5  as  a  rule,  and  was  manufactured 
in  a  very  rude  way.  We  saw  that  at  the  great  fairs  foreign 
iron,  chiefly  from  the  Biscay  coast,  was  much  in  demand,  as 
our  own  supply  was  utterly  insufficient.6  It  was  naturally 
not  until  we  learnt  to  mine  and  use  our  coal  properly  that 
we  learnt  also  how  to  mine  and  manufacture  our  iron. 
Before  learning  this,  English  workmen  used  wood  as  fuel, 

1  Smiles,  Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Boulton  and  Watt),  ch.  iii.     A  diagram 
of  Savory's  engine  is  on  p.  49. 

2  /&.,  chs.  iii.  and  iv.,  and  diagrams,  pp.  61  and  73. 

3  Below,  p.  352. 

4  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  757,  774,  776;  vi.  560. 

*  Cf.  the  35  Henry  VIII.,  c.  17  ;  and  Smiles,  Industrial  Biography,  ch.  ii. 
6  Above,  p.  143. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  MINING          313 

and  it  is  to  this  cause  that  we  owe  the  destruction  of  most 
of  the  forests  which,  at  the  time  of  Domesday,  occupied  so 
large  an  area.  The  extinction  of  the  great  forest  of  the 
Sussex  Wealden  is  an  example  of  this.1  "  The  waste  and 
destruction  of  the  woods  in  the  counties  of  Warwick, 
Stafford,  Hereford,  Monmouth,  Gloucester,  and  Salop  by 
these  iron-works  is  not  to  be  imagined,"  a  speaker  said  in 
Parliament  as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  ; 2  and  as  wood  was  used  as  house-fuel  also,  it  will 
readily  be  understood  what  a  vast  destruction  of  timber 
took  place.  As  early  as  1581  the  erection  of  iron-works 
within  certain  distances  from  London  and  the  Thames 
had  been  prohibited  "  for  the  preservation  of  the  woods."  8 

But  early  in  the  seventeenth  century  Dud  Dudley,  son 
of  Lord  Dudley,  began  to  make  use  of  sea  and  pit  coal  for 
smelting  iron,  and  obtained  (1619)  a  monopoly  "of  the 
mystery  and  art  of  smelting  iron  ore,  and  of  making  the 
same  into  cast  works  or  bars,  in  furnaces,  with  bellows."4 
Dudley  sold  this  cast  iron  at  £12  a  ton,  and  made  a  good 
profit  out  of  it,  but  at  last  his  works  were  destroyed  by  an 
ignorant  mob.6  He  actually  produced  seven  tons  a  week, 
which  was  considered  a  large  supply,  and  shows  the  com- 
parative insignificance  of  the  industry  then.  However,  it 
was  only  comparatively  insignificant,  for  before  the  close  of 
the  century  it  was  calculated  that  180,000  tons  of  ore  were 
produced  in  England  yearly  ;  and  in  the  eighteenth  century 
(1719)  iron  came  third  in  the  list  of  English  manufactures, 
and  the  trade  gave  employment  to  200,000  people.6  There 
was,  however,  still  great  waste  of  wood,  since  a  great  many 
iron-masters  did  not  use  coal,  and  therefore  the  export  and 
even  the  manufacture  of  iron  was  discouraged  by  legislation 
to  such  an  extent,  that,  by  1740,  the  output  had  been 
reduced  to  17,350  tons  per  annum,  barely  a  tenth  of  the 

1  Cf.  Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation,  p.  287 ;  and  below,  p.  314. 

2  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  177. 

8  M'Culloch,  Commercial  Dictionary  (od.  1844) ;  8.v.  Iron,  p.  753. 

4  Cf.  his  book  Metallum  Mortis,  or  Iron  made,  with  pit  coale,  tea  cook, 
«fcr.  (1665);  and  M'Culloch,  Commercial  Diet.  (1844),  ».v.  Iron;  also 
Smiles,  Industrial  Bioyraphy,  ch.  iii. 

8  Ib.  ;  also  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  176. 

•  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  177. 


314  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

previous  amount  quoted.1  The  waste  of  timber  was  most 
noticeable  in  the  Sussex  Wealden,  the  forests  of  which  owe 
their  destruction  almost  entirely  to  the  iron  and  glass 
manufactures.2 

But  about  this  time  another  inventor,  Abraham  Darby, 
of  the  famous  Coalbrookdale  Ironworks,3  discovered  the 
secret  of  the  large  blast-furnace  in  which  both  pit-coal  and 
charcoal  were  used.  He  began  his  experiments  as  early 
as  1730,  but  did  not  do  much  for  some  twenty  years. 
In  1756,  however,  his  works  were  "at  the  top  pinnacle  of 
prosperity  ;  twenty  and  twenty-two  tons  per  week  sold  off  as 
fast  as  made,  and  profit  enough."4 

After  Darby  came  Smeaton,  and  other  inventors,  and  the 
Industrial  Revolution  spread  to  the  iron  trade.  We  shall 
see  it  in  operation  in  our  next  period.5 

§  190.   Pottery. 

As  with  all  other  manufactures,  so,  too,  the  development 
of  pottery  was  reserved  for  the  Renaissance  of  industry  in 
the  eighteenth  century.  Of  course  pottery  of  a  kind  had 
always  been  made  in  England,  especially  where  the  useful 
soil  of  Staffordshire  formed  a  favourable  ground  for  the 
exercise  of  this  art.6  But  the  pottery  hitherto  manufac- 
tured had  been  rude  and  coarse,  and  its  manufacture  was 
a  strictly  domestic  and  not  very  widespread  industry.7  We 
owe  its  improvement,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  largely  to 
the  efforts  of  the  Dutch  and  Huguenot  8  immigrants  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  For  the  Dutch  had 
been  great  among  the  potters  of  Europe,  as  the  renown  of 
Delft- ware  still  testifies,  while  France  bad  the  honour  of 
being  the  land  of  Palissy.  The  factories  at  Burslem,  how- 

1  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  178,  and  M'Culloch,  Commercial  Diet.,  s.v.  Iron. 

2  Norden,  in  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  44. 

3  Smiles,  Industrial  Biography,  ch.  v.  p.  80. 

4  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  179.  6  Below,  p.  341,  352. 

6  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  169. 

7  There  were,  however,  potteries  elsewhere  than  in  Staffs.,  as  e.g.  in 
Essex;  Pennant  (1801),  Journey  from  London  to  the  Isle  of  Wight,  i.  53; 
and  Lowestoft  ware  is  well  known  to  connoisseurs. 

8  Anderson,  Chron.  Commerce,  ii.  569. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  MINING  315 

ever,  owed  their  origin  to  the  industry  of  two  Germans  from 
Nuremberg,  called  Elers,  from  whom  an  Englishman, 
Astbury,  learnt  the  secret  of  producing  the  red  unglazed 
Japanese  ware,  and  the  black  Egyptian  ware.1  Burslem, 
too,  was  the  birthplace  of  Josiah  Wedgwood,2  born  1730, 
who  first  began  business  in  1752  as  manager  for  a  master- 
potter,  but  started  in  business  on  his  own  account  in  1759, 
the  eve  of  the  Industrial  Revolution.  His  efforts  and 
experiments  were  magnificent  and  untiring,  and  they  can 
be  read  at  leisure  in  various  biographical  works.  It  is 
sufficient  here  to  say  that  Wedgwood  was  the  man  who 
first  made  the  art  of  pottery  a  science,  and  before  his  death, 
in  1795,  he  had  brought  this  manufacture  to  such  a  pitch 
of  excellence  that  few  improvements  have  been  left  for  his 
successors  to  make,  and  it  rose  to  be  one  of  the  chief 
industries  of  the  country.3 

§  191.   Other  Mining  Industries. 

There  remain  one  or  two  industries  that  require  a 
passing  mention,  but  which  were  not  in  the  eighteenth 
century  of  much  importance.  As  to  the  metals,  the 
foreign  trade  in  tin  and  lead  has  been  already  mentioned. 
In  the  reign  of  John  the  tin-mines  of  Cornwall  were 
farmed  by  the  Jews,4  and  the  tin  and  lead  trade  must  have 
attained  considerable  proportions  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
for  the  Black  Prince  paid  his  own  expenses  in  the  French 
wars  by  the  produce  of  his  mines  of  those  metals  in 
Devonshire 6  Copper,  also,  was  mined  in  the  northern 
counties,  and  in  a  statute  of  15  Edward  III.  (1343)  we 
find  grants  of  mines  given  at  Skeldane,  in  Northumber- 
land ;  at  Alston  Moor,  in  Cumberland  ;  and  at  Richmond, 
in  Yorkshire  ;  a  royalty  of  one-eighth  going  to  the  king, 
and  one-ninth  to  the  lord  of  the  manor.8  Keswick  was  at 
that  time  a  centre  of  this  industry  ;  but  the  art  of  the 
coppersmith  was  developed  chiefly  in  Germany.7  The  mines 
were  also  very  primitive,  the  approaches  being  made,  not 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  171  ;  Smileu,  Self  Help,  p.  88. 
a  SraUea,  Self  Help,  pp.  88-93.  •  lb. ,  p.  92. 

4  Yeats,  Technical  History  of  Commerce,  p.  172.  '  /'-.,  p.  17X 

8  76.,  p.  173.  T  76.,  p.  186. 


316  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

by  shafts,  but  by  adits  in  the  side  of  a  convenient  hill. 
Another  mineral,  which  is  very  abundant  in  England, 
especially  in  Worcestershire  and  Cheshire,  was  at  this 
period  hardly  utilised.  Salt  was  a  necessary  of  life  to  the 
English  householder,  for  he  had  to  salt  his  meat  for  the 

O  ' 

winter  ;  but  he  did  not  know  how  to  mine  it  himself,  and 
either  got  it  imported  from  south-west  France,  or  contented 
himself  with  the  inferior  article  evaporated  on  the  sea- 
coast,  until  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century.1 

It  has  been  already  mentioned  that  brick-making  was  a 
lost  art  from  the  fifth  to  the  fifteenth  century.  The  first 
purchase  to  be  recorded  was  at  Cambridge,  in  1449  ;  but 
before  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  it  became  a  common 
building  material  in  the  eastern  counties,  and  in  the  six- 
teenth century  was  generally  used  in  London  and  in  the 
counties  along  the  lower  course  of  the  Thames.2 

§  1 9  2.  The  Close  of  the  Period  of  Manual  Industries. 
We  have  now  reached  a  turning-point  in  English  indus- 
trial history,  and  are  about  to  study  a  period  that  is  in 
every  way  a  violent  contrast  to  the  centuries  which  pre- 
ceded it.  We  have  come  to  the  time  when  machinery 
begins  to  displace  unaided  manual  labour.  Hitherto  all  our 
manufactures,  our  mining,  and,  of  course,  our  agriculture, 
had  been  performed  by  the  literal  labour  of  men's  hands, 
helped  but  slightly  by  a  few  simple  inventions.  Industry, 
too,  was  not  organised  upon  a  vast  capitalistic  basis,  though 
of  course  capitalists  existed ;  but  it  would  be  more  correct 
to  say  that  hitherto  industry  had  been  chiefly  carried  on  by 
numbers  of  smaller  capitalists  who  were  also  manual  work- 
men, even  when  they  employed  other  workmen  under  them.3 
Only  in  agriculture  had  the  capitalist  class  become  very  far 
removed  from  the  labourers.4  There  was  certainly  no  such 
violent  contrast  as  now  exists  between  a  mill-owner  and  a 
mill-hand  in  the  realm  of  manufacturing  industry,6  though, 

1  Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation,  p.  277.  2  Ib.,  p.  279. 

3  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  pp.  72,  53. 

4  Above,  pp.  157,  184,  212,  216,  271.     Toynbee  (p.  71)  is  wrong  in  say- 
ing "the  capitalist  farmers  were  not  yet  in  existence." 

5  Toynbee,  Indust.  Rev.,  pp.  71,  53. 


MANUFACTURES  AND  MINING  317 

of  course,  this  contrast  existed  between  the  rich  landowner, 
who  received  rents,  and  the  poor  agricultural  labourer,  whose 
labour  helped  to  pay  them.  But,  speaking  of  industry 
generally,  it  may  be  said  that  the  absence  of  machinery 
kept  employers  and  workmen  more  upon  a  common  level ; 
and  as  large  factories,  of  course,  did  not  exist,  industry  was 
carried  on  chiefly  in  the  workmen's  homes,  while  the  work- 
man was  not  merely  a  unit  among  hundreds  of  unknown 
"  hands  "  in  a  mill,  but  a  person  not  hopelessly  removed  in 
social  rank  from  his  employer,  who  was  well  acquainted 
with  him,  and,  like  him,  worked  with  his  own  hands. 

But  now  this  old  order  of  things  passes  away,  and  a 
new  order  appears,  ushered  in  by  the  whirr  and  rattle  of 
machinery  and  the  mighty  hiss  of  steam.  A  complete 
transformation  takes  place,  and  the  life  of  England  stirs 
anew  in  the  great  Industrial  Revolution. 


PERIOD  V 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVOLUTION  AND  MODERN 
ENGLAND 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE   EVE   OF   THE   REVOLUTION 

§  193.   Industry  and  Politics.     Landowners  and 

Merchant  Princes. 

WE  are,  of  course,  mainly  concerned  in  this  book  with 
industrial  facts;  but  as  these  underlie  all  politics  and 
national  history,  we  must  pause  for  a  moment  to  see  how 
the  growth  of  commerce  had  by  this  time  affected  the 
relations  of  two  great  classes :  the  landowners  and  their 
new  rivals,  the  great  merchants  and  the  commercial  classes 
generally.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  deposition  of  James  IL, 
or  the  Whig  Revolution  of  1688,  as  it  is  sometimes  called,1 
the  land-owning  class  had  been  practically  supreme  in  social 
and  political  influence.  But  from  that  time  forward,  al- 
though they  still  held  this  high  position,  their  influence  was 
heavily  counterbalanced  by  that  of  the  mercantile  classes.2 
The  Revolution  may  have  been  aristocratic  in  its  origin,8 
but  it  was  certainly  democratic  in  its  ultimate  results.  The 
capitalists  and  the  commercial  magnates  were  all  favoured 
by  the  great  movement  which  divided  the  nation  into 
the  two  historic  parties  of  Whigs  and  Tories,  for  it  was 
that  movement  which  first  accentuated  their  importance  in 
the  political  life  of  the  nation.4  That  importance  was  still 
further  increased  by  a  series  of  significant  economic  events,6 
already  alluded  to,  which  took  place  shortly  after  the 

1  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  i.    171,  remarks  that  the 
House  of  Lords  was  chiefly  Whig,  and  that  the  aristocracy  really  effected 
this  Revolution. 

2  For  the  mercantile  element  in  politics,  </.  Lecky,  History,  i.  199,  200. 

3  Lecky  (History,  i.  16,  156)  shows  that  it  was  an  aristocratic  movement, 
but  does  not  indicate  quite  so  clearly  its  results  in  bringing  into  prominence 
the  middle  (and,  later,  even  the  lower)  classes. 

4  "The  political  influence  of  the  industrial  and  moneyed  «•!, 
greatly  increased  by  the  Revolution."     Lecky,  History,  i.  201. 

8  Above,  pp.  299-304. 

X 


322  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

Revolution  ;  namely,  the  foundation  of  the  Bank  of  Eng- 
land (1694),  the  new  and  extended  Charter  granted  to  the 
East  India  Company  in  1693,  the  beginning  of  the  National 
Debt  in  the  same  year,  and  the  Restoration  of  the  Currency 
in  1696.  The  commercial  and  industrial  section  of  the 
community  was  becoming  more  and  more  prominent,  and 
the  great  Whig  families  who  occupied  themselves  with 
endeavouring  to  rule  England  in  the  eighteenth  century 
relied  for  their  support  upon  the  middle  and  commercial 
classes.1  The  old  reverence,  however,  for  the  position  of  a 
landowner  had  not  yet  died  out,  and  the  men  who  had 
gained  their  wealth  by  commerce  strove  for  a  higher  social 
position  by  buying  land  in  large  quantities.2  The  time  had 
not  yet  come  when  a  merchant  was  on  equal  terms  with  a 
landowner. 

In  fact,  there  has  always  been  an  extraordinary  senti- 
mentalism  as  regards  land  among  all  classes  of  the  English 
people  ;  and  for  certain  reasons,  which,  though  not  entirely 
baseless,  are  still  somewhat  inadequate,  a  man  who  has 
merely  inherited  a  large  amount  of  land  (even  if  he  has 
never  attempted  to  cultivate  it)  is  regarded  as  superior  to 
one  who  has  amassed  a  fortune  in  the  industrial  or  com- 
mercial world.  And  this  feeling  was  stronger  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century  than  it  is  at  the  present  time,  though  it  is 
certainly  even  now  by  no  means  extinct.  Hence  com- 
mercial magnates  then,  as  now,  or  even  more  than  now, 
bought  land,  hoping  to  buy  with  it  social  prestige.  The 
James  Lowther  who  was  created  Earl  of  Lonsdale  in  1784 
was  the  descendant  of  a  merchant  engaged  in  the  Levant 
trade ; 8  and  the  first  Earl  of  Tilney  was  the  son  of  that 
eminent  man  of  business,  Sir  Josiah  Child.4  The  daughters 
of  merchant  princes  were  even  allowed  to  marry — and 
maintain — the  scions  of  a  needy  aristocracy.6 

The  beginning  of  this  new  order  of  things  can  be  dated 
with  some  accuracy  by  a  remark  of  Sir  W.  Temple's :  "I 

1  Locky,  History,  i.  187. 

2  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  62.  3  Ib. ,  p.  63. 
4  Defoe,  Complete  Tradesman  (ed.  1839,  Chambers),  p.  74. 

8  Thus,  Child's  daughter  married  the  Marquis  of  Worcester ;  cf.  Toynbee, 
Ind.  JRev.,p.  63. 


THE  EVE  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        323 

think  I  remember,"  he  wrote  in  the  last  quarter  of  the 
seventeenth  century,1  "  the  first  noble  families  that  married 
into  the  city  for  downright  money,  and  thereby  introduced 
by  degrees  this  public  grievance,  which  has  since  ruined  so 
many  estates  by  the  necessity  of  giving  good  portions  to 
daughters."  Defoe  actually  discovered  the  amazing  and 
revolutionary  fact  that  a  man  engaged  in  commerce  might 
be  a  gentleman,  though,  no  doubt,  this  bold  supposition  of 
his  was  at  first  looked  upon  with  incredulity.  He  says : 
"  Trade  is  so  far  from  being  inconsistent  with  a  gentleman 
that  in  England  trade  makes  a  gentleman ;  for,  after  a 
generation  or  two,  the  tradesman's  children  come  to  be  as 
good  gentlemen,  statesmen,  parliament  men,  judges,  bishops, 
and  noblemen,  as  those  of  the  highest  birth  and  the  most 
ancient  families."  2  Dean  Swift  remarked,  "  that  the  power 
which  used  to  follow  land  had  gone  over  to  money."  8  Dr 
Johnson  announced  oracularly  that  "  an  English  merchant 
was  a  new  species  of  gentleman."  *  This  influx  of  the 
merchants  into  the  upper  classes  was  not,  however,  an 
entirely  new  thing,  though  no  doubt  it  became  more  notice- 
able at  this  time ;  for  Harrison,  the  well-known  describer 
of  Elizabethan  England,  had  long  before  remarked  that, 
though  "  citizens  and  burgesses  have  next  place  to  gentle- 
men," yet,  "  they  often  change  estate  with  gentlemen,  as 
gentlemen  do  with  them,  by  a  mutual  conversion  of  one 
into  the  other." 6 

Now,  the  Industrial  Revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century 
went  still  further  than  the  political  revolution  of  the  seven- 
teenth to  gain  social  and  political  influence  for  the  commer- 
cial classes.  It  succeeded  in  destroying  the  feudal  but  foolish 
idea  that  the  landowners  alone  were  to  be  looked  upon  as 
the  leaders  of  the  nation.  It  gave  the  capitalists  and 
manufacturers  a  new  accession  of  power,  by  enormously  in- 
creasing their  wealth.  Moreover,  it  helped  to  undermine 
the  landed  interest  by  making  the  manufactures  of  England 

1  Temple's  Miscellanies,  quoted  in  Lecky,  History,  i.  193. 
a  Defoe,  Complete  Tradesman,  u.  s.,  p.  74.         »  Swift,  Examiner,  No.  13. 
4  Boswell,  Life  of  Johnson  (7th  edn.),  ii.  108. 

•  Harrison,  Description  of  England,  Book  III.,  ch.  iv.  («da.  1577),  p*g* 
9,  Camelot  Scries  edn. 


324  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

at  first  equal,  and  afterwards  superior,  to  her  agriculture,  so 
that  a  rich  mill-owner  or  iron-master  became  as  important 
as  a  large  landowner.  The  monopoly  of  the  landed  interest 
was  broken  by  capital.  Nowhere  perhaps  is  the  contrast 
between  the  old  and  new  classes  in  the  last  century  seen 
more  closely  than  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's  novel  Rob  Roy, 
where  the  old  Tory  squire  who  held  fast  to  Church  and 
king  is  contrasted  with  the  new  commercial  magnate  who 
supported  the  House  of  Hanover.1  But  already  the  com- 
mercial element  was  coming  to  the  front  in  politics. 

In  very  few  periods  of  English  political  history  was  the 
commercial  element  so  strong  as  in  the  early  Hanoverian 
days  under  the  regime  of  Walpole  and  Pelham.2  The 
questions  that  excited  most  interest  in  Parliament  were 
chiefly  those  connected  with  commerce  and  finance.3  Burke, 
writing  in  1752,  summed  up  the  requirements  of  a  Member 
of  the  House  of  Commons  in  a  plaintive  sentence,4  which 
illustrates  the  tendency  of  the  time  :  "  A  man,  after  all, 
would  do  more  by  figures  of  arithmetic  than  by  figures  of 
rhetoric."  A  rhetorician  himself,  he  meant,  in  this  utter- 
ance, to  be  sarcastic  ;  but  it  would  be  well  if  it  were  possible 
for  orators  to  remember  that  two  and  two  can  only  make 
four,  and  that  the  figures  of  arithmetic  are  safer  guides  for 
the  statesman  than  the  hyperboles  of  oratory.  The  intro- 
duction of  the  mercantile  element  into  Parliament,  and 
into  the  ranks  of  the  aristocracy,  though  by  no  means  an 
unmixed  blessing,  has  yet  had  the  healthy  effect  of  keep- 
ing the  English  nobility  in  touch  with  the  mass  of  the 
people,5  and  of  connecting  all  ranks  together  in  the  common 
interests  of  the  national  life, 

§  194.   The  Coming  of  the  Capitalists. 
Now,  although  the  commercial  capitalist  was  fast  coming 
into  prominence  as  the   rival   of  the  landowner,6  he   was 

1  This  illustration  is  due  to  W.  Clarke,  in  Fabian  Essays,  p.  78. 

2  Cf.  Lecky,  History,  i.  433.  3  Ib.  *  Prior,  Life  of  Burke,  i.  38. 
8  Cf.  Lecky,  History,  i.  170  sqq.,  on  the  English  aristocracy  ;  and  also 

Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  63. 

6  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  6,  remarks  :  "  From  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century  onwards  the  monied  interest  has  overbalanced  the 
landed  interest."  This  is  partially  true  but  the  capitalist  hardly  over- 


THE  EVE  OF  THE   REVOLUTION        325 

becoming  still  more  prominent  as  the  master  of  the  work- 
men whom  he  employed.  For  before  the  Industrial  Re- 
volution the  capitalist  had  occupied  a  comparatively  sub- 
ordinate place.1  Of  course  capitalists  existed,  as  they  have 
always  done,  but  their  power  was  small  as  compared  with 
that  of  their  successors  to-day.2  The  vast  enterprises  of 
modern  industry,  such  as  railways  or  mills,  which  often 
require  so  large  an  expenditure  of  capital  before  they  can 
begin  to  be  in  any  way  remunerative,  were  practically  un- 
known a  century  ago.  The  industrial  system  was,  more- 
over, far  less  complicated,  far  less  international,  far  less 
subdivided.3  Instead  of  the  great  capitalist  manufacturers 
of  to-day,  who  can  control  the  markets  of  a  nation,  England 
possessed  numbers  of  smaller  capitalists,4  with  far  less 
capital,  both  individually  and  in  the  aggregate,  than  that 
which  is  now  required  by  a  man  who  undertakes  even  a 
moderate  business.  The  great  capitalists  of  the  last  cen- 
tury were  chiefly  the  foreign  trading  companies.  But  home 
manufactures,  although  greatly  developed,6  were  still  largely 
conducted  upon  the  domestic  system,  and  the  small  capi- 
talist-artisan was  a  conspicuous  feature  of  that  time,  just  as 
the  large  mill-owner  or  iron-master  is  of  our  own  day. 
Manufactures  were  carried  on  by  a  number  of  small  master- 
manufacturers,8  who  gave  out  work  to  be  done  in  the  homes 
of  their  employe's ;  and  who  often  combined  agricultural 
with  manufacturing  pursuits.7  But,  nevertheless,  there  were 
signs  of  the  approach  of  the  methods  of  modern  capitalism, 
and  of  production  upon  a  large  scale.  It  was  becoming  in- 
balanced  the  landowner  yet,  though  he  was  becoming  on  more  equal  terms 
with  him. 

1  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  52. 

a  Cunningham,  Orowth  of  Industry,  ii.  5,  dates  the  rise  of  the  capitalist 
class  "from  the  time  of  Elizabeth  onwards."  This  is  rather  to  antedate 
their  coming  into  prominence. 

»  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  i.,  remarks  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  collect  all  the  workmen  in  different  branches  of  a  manufacture 
into  the  same  "workhouse"  (i.e.,  mill).  In  his  time  the  huge  modern 
factory  was  unknown.  (Cf,  Rogers'  edition  of  Smith,  Vol.  L  p.  6,  note.) 

4  Toynbee,  Indust.  Revolution,  p.  53. 

•  Cf.  Smith,  health  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  xi.  (Vol.  I.  p.  260,  Clarendon 
Press  edition). 

•  Toynbee,  Indust.  Revolution,  53.         T  Qf.  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  T.  810 


326  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

creasingly  the  custom  to  employ  a  large  number  of  workpeople 
together  under  one  roof,  or  at  least  under  the  direction  and 
supervision  of  one  great  manufacturer.  Arthur  Young,  for 
instance,  mentions  a  silk  mill  at  Sheffield  with  152  hands, 
a  large  number  in  the  eighteenth  century  ;  a  factory  at 
Boynton  with  150  hands;  and  a  master-manufacturer  at 
Darlington  who  ran  above  fifty  looms.1  Work  was  also 
given  out  by  capitalist  manufacturers  or  merchants  to  work- 
men to  do  at  home  in  the  villages  and  towns.  These 
workmen  were,  like  the  employes  of  the  present  day, 
entirely  dependent  upon  their  employer  for  work  and  wages. 
Thus  at  Nottingham,  in  1750,  we  find  fifty  master-manu- 
facturers who  "  put  out "  work  in  this  way  for  as  many  as 
1200  looms  in  the  hosiery  trade.2 

§  195.  The  Class  of  Small  Manufacturers. 

But  although  the  coming  of  the  capitalists  was  now  near 
at  hand,  the  old  order  of  things  was  not  seriously  disturbed 
till  the  application  of  steam  power  to  machinery  some  years 
later.  There  were  still  many  small  manufacturers  who  lived 
on  their  own  land  and  worked  with  their  workpeople  in 
their  own  houses.  Defoe,  in  his  Tour  through  Great  Britain 
(made  in  1724-26),  gives  an  interesting  account  of  this 
class  at  a  time  when  they  were  in  the  height  of  their  pros- 
perity, before  machinery  and  steam  had  even  begun  to  cause 
their  disappearance.  Speaking  of  the  land  near  Halifax,  in 
Yorkshire,  he  says  : 3  "  The  land  was  divided  into  small 
enclosures,  from  two  acres  to  six  or  seven  each,  seldom  more, 
every  three  or  four  pieces  of  land  having  a  house  belonging 
to  them  ;  hardly  a  house  standing  out  of  speaking  distance 
from  another.  We  could  see  at  every  house  a  tenter,  and 
on  almost  every  tenter  a  piece  of  cloth  or  kersie  or  shalloon. 
At  every  considerable  house  there  was  a  manufactory. 
Every  clothier  keeps  one  horse  at  least  to  carry  his  manu- 
factures to  the  market ;  and  every  one  generally  keeps  a 
cow  or  two  or  more  for  his  family.  By  this  means  the 

1  Young,  Northern  Tour,  i.  134  ;  ii.  8,  467  (ed.  1770). 

2  Toynbee,  Indust.  Revolution,  53  ;  Felkin,  History  of  Hosiery,  83. 

3  Tour,  iii.  pp.  144-146. 


THE  EVE  OF  THE   REVOLUTION        327 

small  pieces  of  enclosed  laud  about  each  house  are  occupied, 
for  they  scarce  sow  corn  enough  to  feed  their  poultry.  The 
houses  are  full  of  lusty  fellows,  some  at  the  dye-vat,  some  at 
the  looms,  others  dressing  the  cloths ;  the  women  and 
children  carding  or  spinning  ;  being  all  employed,  from  the 
youngest  to  the  oldest."  And  Defoe  adds  a  remark  which 
is  certainly  not  applicable  either  to  Halifax  or  to  any  othei 
manufacturing  town  of  the  present  day,  for  he  concludes  his 
description  with  the  words :  "  not  a  beggar  to  be  seen,  01 
an  idle  person."  * 

§  196.  Tlie  Condition  of  the  Manufacturing  Population. 

For  it  is  a  significant  fact  that  under  the  old  domestic 
system,  simple  and  cumbrous  as  it  was,  the  manufacturing 
population  was  very  much  better  off  than  it  was  for  some 
time  after  the  Industrial  Revolution.  For  one  thing,  they 
still  lived  more  or  less  in  the  country,  and  were  not  crowded 
together  in  stifling  alleys  and  courts,  or  in  long  rows  ol 
bare  smoke-begrimed  streets,  in  houses  like  so  many  dirty 
rabbit-hutches.  Even  if  the  artisan  did  live  in  a  town  at 
that  time,  the  town  was  very  different  from  the  abodes  of 
smoke  and  dirt  which  now  prevail  in  the  manufacturing 
districts.  It  had  a  more  rural  character.2  There  were  no 
tall  chimneys,  belching  out  clouds  of  evil  smoke  ;  no  huge, 
hot  factories  with  their  hundreds  of  windows  blazing  forth 
a  lurid  light  in  the  darkness,  and  rattling  with  the  whirr 
and  din  of  ceaseless  machinery  by  day  and  night  There 
were  no  gigantic  blast  furnaces  rising  amid  blackened  heaps 
of  cinders,  or  chemical  works  poisoning  the  fields  and  trees 
for  miles  around.  These  were  yet  to  come.  The  factory 
and  the  furnace  were  almost  unknown.  Work  was  carried 
on  by  the  artisan  in  his  little  stone  or  brick  house,  with  the 
workshop  inside,  where  the  wool  for  the  weft  was  carded 
and  spun  by  his  wife  and  daughters,8  and  the  cloth  was 

1  Tour,  iii.  p.  146. 

2  Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  480. 

1  At  Armley  "  many  persona  who  have  small  farms  also  carry  on  cloth- 
making,  employing  their  wives,  children,  and  servants."  Report  from  tht 
Committee  on  the  state  of  the  woollen  manufacture ;  Report*,  1806,  iii.  602 ; 
also  the  quotation  from  Defoe,  just  above. 


328  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

woven  by  himself  and  his  sons.  He  had  also,  in  nearly  all 
cases,  his  plot  of  land  near  the  house,1  which  provided  him 
both  with  food  and  recreation,  for  he  could  relieve  the 
monotony  of  weaving  by  cultivating  his  little  patch  of 
ground,  or  feeding  his  pigs  and  poultry.  The  woollen 
weavers,  especially,  in  all  parts  of  the  country  appear  to 
have  had  allotments  or  large  gardens,2  some  of  which  still 
exist ;  and  even  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
there  was  a  large  part  of  the  manufacturing  population 
which  was  not  yet  divorced  from  rural  employments.3 

§  197.   Two  Examples  of  Village  Life. 

The  old  conditions  of  life  in  English  villages  under  this 
domestic  system,  with  its  healthy  combination  of  agricul- 
tural and  manufacturing  industry,  and  its  prevalence  of 
bye-industries,  are  even  yet  not  entirely  forgotten,  and 
may  be  here  illustrated  by  personal  testimonies,  one  from 
the  south  and  the  other  from  the  north  of  England.  A 
most  interesting  picture  of  life  in  a  Hampshire  village  is 
thus  drawn  by  the  late  Professor  Thorold  Rogers.4  "  In 
my  native  village  [West  Meon]  in  Hampshire,  I  well  re- 
member two  instances  of  agricultural  labourers  who  raised 
themselves  through  the  machinery  of  the  allowance  system  5 
to  the  rank  and  fortunes  of  small  yeomen.  Both  had  large 
families,  and  both  practised  a  bye-industry.  The  village 
was  peculiar  in  its  social  character,  for  there  was  not  a 
tenant-farmer  in  it,  all  being  freeholders  or  copyholders. 
There  was  no  poverty  in  the  whole  place.  Most  of  the 
labourers  baked  their  own  bread,  brewed  their  own  beer, 
kept  pigs  and  poultry,  and  had  half  an  acre  or  an  acre  to 
till  for  themselves  as  part  of  their  hire.  The  rector  built 
extensively  parsonage,  schools,  and  finally  church,  from  his 
own  means,  and,  therefore,  employment  was  pretty  general. 

1  Arthur  Young,   Farmer's  Letters,   i.   205,   and  cf.    Toynbee,   Indust. 
Rev.,  p.  68. 

2  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  480.     I  might  add  from  personal 
observation  the  case  of  the  place  still  known    as    the    "  Woolsorters' 
Gardens"  at  Heaton,  near  Bradford,  Yorks. 

3  Cunningham,  u.  «.,  ii.  481. 

4  Six  Centuries,  p.  502.  5  See  below,  pp.  408,  412-414. 


THE  EVE  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        329 

The  village  mason  became  a  considerable  yeoman.  But  tin- 
two  labourers  of  whom  I  am  speaking  had  their  allowances, 
and  lived  on  their  fixed  wages,  with  the  profits  of  their 
bye-labour  .  .  .  and  the  produce  of  their  small  curtilage." 
Thus  the  prevalence  of  bye-industries,  combined  with  allot- 
ments, gave  the  labourer  and  artisan,  under  the  domestic 
system,  a  far  better  chance  of  gaining  a  comfortable  and 
healthy  livelihood  than  he  possessed  in  those  cases  where 
the  factory  system  had  deprived  him  of  these  advantages. 

The  other  picture  is  from  a  writer l  who  derives  his  ex- 
perience from  the  northern  counties.  Speaking  of  English 
village  life,  "  as  it  existed  in  the  memory  of  many  now 
living,"  he  remarks :  "  The  village  combined  agricultural 
with  industrial  occupation  ;  the  click  of  the  loom  was  heard  in 
the  cottages ;  the  farmyard  and  the  fields,  the  cottages  and 
the  allotment  gardens,  made  a  delightful  picture  of  rural 
life.  The  land  was  mainly  freehold ;  the  farmers  were  of 
the  yeoman  class,  and  not  infrequently  combined  the  calling 
of  a  clothier  or  master  manufacturer  along  with  that  of 
farming.  The  farmer's  wife,  although  born  with  a  silver 
spoon,  was  industrious  and  thrifty ;  with  her  own  hand  she 
would  churn  the  butter,  make  the  cheese,  cure  the  bacon 
and  ham,  or  bake  the  bread  ;  her  daughters  would  assist  in 
spinning  the  yarn,  or  knitting  the  stockings ;  and  from  the 
cloths  woven  under  their  supervision  they  would,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  village  dressmaker,  make  their  own  dresses. 
If  you  entered  one  of  the  cottages  you  would  find  the  master 
of  the  house  in  the  'chamber,'  sitting  at  the  loom,  busy 
throwing  the  shuttle,  weaving  a  piece  of  cloth  ;  his  daughter 
would  be  sitting  at  the  wheel,  spinning  weft ;  and  the  good 
wife  would  be  busy  with  her  domestic  duties.  One  son 
would  be  out  working  on  the  land  for  the  farmer;  another 
would  be  working  on  the  weaver's  allotment.  Down  in 
their  little  allotment  plot  they  grow  their  own  vegetables, 
and  a  little  crop  of  oats,  which  they  have  ground  into  oat- 
meal for  making  their  porridge  ;  they  also  keep  a  pig  or 
two,  and  provide  their  own  bacon  and  ham.  They  are  on 
good  terms  with  the  master -manufacturer — that  is,  the 

1  Thomas  Illingworth,  Distribution  Reform  (Caaaell,  London,  1885),  p.  81. 


330  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

gentleman  who  gives  them  warp  and  weft  to  weave  into 
cloth.  He  is  also  a  large  farmer,  and  in  the  hay-harvest 
and  corn-harvest  they  all  have  a  fine  time  in  the  fields, 
giving  a  hand  to  the  cutting,  the  harvesting,  and  home- 
carrying  of  the  crops.  .  .  .  Their  chief  articles  of  food  are 
produced  from  the  land  immediately  surrounding  them. 
Their  means  of  subsistence  and  comfort  are  not  to  be  com- 
puted by  the  amount  of  their  earnings  in  money-wages,  but 
the  produce  of  their  bit  of  land,  and  the  ease  and  cheapness 
with  which  they  can  obtain  other  necessities." ] 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  old  domestic  system  had, 
at  least  for  the  working-classes,  many  advantages,  some  of 
which  have  not  been  even  yet  perhaps  quite  compensated 
by  the  undoubted  benefits  of  the  Industrial  Revolution. 
It  is  foolish,  as  well  as  inaccurate,  to  imagine  that  the  past 
must  have  been  necessarily  better  than  the  present ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  may  readily  be  admitted  that  there 
are  many  single  features  in  it  which  compare  more  than 
favourably  with  those  of  to-day,  though  the  general  outline 
of  the  present  may  be  superior. 

Work,  for  instance,  was  more  regular  than  it  often  is  at 
present,  for  there  were  fewer  commercial  fluctuations ; 2 
fashions  did  not  change  so  quickly,  and  the  market  for 
homespun  fabrics  was  always  steady  and  assured.  The 
relations  between  employers  and  employed  were  far  closer ; 
even  the  distribution  of  wealth  was  comparatively  more 
equal.8  Wages  were  somewhat  less  in  money  value  than 
at  present,  but,  then,  prices  of  food  and  rent  were  only 
about  half  what  they  are  now.  Arthur  Young  gives 
9s.  6d.  as  the  average  weekly  wages  of  an  artisan  in  the 
North  and  Midland  counties,  though  in  some  cases  they 
were  much  higher,  while  the  average  rent  for  a  cottage  in 
the  same  counties  he  puts  at  28s.  2d.  a  year,  or  only  6|d. 
per  week.4  And  it  must  be  remembered  that  this  included 

1  The  writer  means  that  most  of  these  could  be  obtained  from  their  own 
work,  or  from  their  neighbours,  who  practised  other  bye-industries ;  cf.  pp. 
82-83  of  the  book  quoted. 

2  Cf.  Toynbee,  Indust.  Revolution,  p.  71.  *  Ib. 

*  Young,  Northern  Tour,  iv.  470-472  (wages),  435-439  (rent) ;  ed.  1770. 
The  wages  of  hand  wool  combers  in  1747  were  12s.  to  21s.  a  week,  accord- 
ing to  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  159. 


THE  EVE  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        331 

a  piece  of  land  round  the  cottage.  Meat,  also,  was  cheap, 
being  from  2$d.  to  3id.  per  pound;  and  bread  Ijd.  a 
pound.1  In  fact,  we  may  confidently  say  that  artisans, 
especially  spinners  and  weavers,  were  well  off  about  1760. 
Adam  Smith  testifies  to  this  in  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 
"  Not  only  has  grain  become  somewhat  cheaper,"  he  says, 
"  but  many  other  things  from  which  the  industrious  poor 
derive  an  agreeable  and  wholesome  variety  of  food  have 
become  a  great  deal  cheaper."  2  And  the  healthy  condition 
of  industry  in  general  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  at  the 
close  of  the  wars  with  France,  by  the  Peace  of  1763,  when 
more  than  100,000  men  accustomed  to  war  were  thrown 
upon  the  country,  and  had  to  find  work  or  else  be  sup- 
ported in  some  way  or  other,  "  not  only  no  great  convulsion, 
but  no  sensible  disorder  arose."  8 


§  198.  Condition  of  the  Agricultural  Population. 

Nor  was  that  convenient  plenty  which  was  the  lot  of  the 
manufacturing  portion  of  the  people  confined  only  to  that 
section.  The  condition  of  the  agricultural  labourer,  who 
was  generally  the  worst  off  of  all  classes,  from  being  so  much 
under  the  direct  supervision  of  his  master,  had  considerably 
improved,  together  with  the  general  improvement  of  agri- 
culture spoken  of  in  a  previous  chapter.  The  price  of  corn 
had  fallen,  while  wages  had  risen,  though  these  were  less 
than  an  artisan's,  being,  according  to  Arthur  Young's 
average  estimate  for  the  North  and  Midland  counties,  about 
7s.  a  week.4  But  it  was  generally  8s.  or  10s.,  while  the 
board  of  a  working  man  may  be  placed  at  about  5s.  or  6s. 
a  week.6  Cottages  were  occasionally  rent  free,  or,  at  any 
rate,  only  paid  a  low  rent,  never  more  than  50s.  or  60a 
per  year,8  and  generally  much  less.  Moreover,  just  as 

1  Young,  Northern  Tour,  iv.  451  sqq. 

2  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  viii.  (i.  82,  Clarendon  Preaa  edn.). 
»  Wealth  of  Nations.  Bk.  IV.  ch.  ii.  (ii.  43,  Clarendon  Proas  edn.}. 

4  Northern  Tour,  iv.  446.  The  exact  average  ia  7a.  Id.  He  give*  board 
as  8d.  a  day  in  the  North  and  lOd.  in  the  South.  Jb.,  iv.  441. 

6  Of.  A  Table  of  Wages  and  Prices  of  Commodities  during  three  important 
Epochs  of  English  Industry,  by  Thomaa  Illingworth  (Bradford).  *  Ib. 


332  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

artisans  added  to  their  earnings  by  agricultural  work,  so, 
too,  agricultural  labourers  increased  their  wages  by  such 
bye-industries  as  spinning  and  lace-making.1  There  was  an 
abundance  of  food,  clothing,  and  furniture.2  Wheat-bread 
had  almost  entirely  superseded  rye-bread.3  Every  poor 
family  now  drank  tea,  which  had  formerly  been  a  costly 
luxury.4  The  consumption  of  meat  was,  says  Arthur 
Young,  "  pretty  considerable,"  and  that  of  cheese  "  im- 
mense." 5  An  earlier  writer  states  that  the  labourers,  "  by 
their  large  wages  and  the  cheapness  of  all  necessaries, 
enjoyed  better  dwellings,  diet,  and  apparel  in  England  than 
the  husbandmen  or  farmers  did  in  other  countries."  6  Cer- 
tainly Arthur  Young  was  struck  with  the  difference  between 
the  agricultural  population  of  England  and  that  of  France, 
which  latter  country  he  visited  shortly  before  the  Revo- 
lution,7 when  the  misery  of  the  labourer  was  at  its 
lowest  depth,  owing  to  the  extortions  of  the  privileged 
noblesse. 

§  199.  Growth  of  Population. 

But  not  only  had  the  condition  of  the  industrial  popula- 
tion improved  in  the  period  1700-1750,  but  their  numbers 
had,  as  a  consequence,  also  considerably  increased.  The 
figures  rose  from  5,475,000  in  1700  to  6,467,000  in 
1750.8  And  now,  too,  was  beginning  that  great  shifting 
of  the  centres  of  population,  from  the  South  to  the  North 
of  England,  which  is  so  important  a  feature  in  the  new 
industrial  epoch.  The  most  suggestive  fact  of  this  period 
is  the  growth  of  the  population  of  Lancashire  and  of  the 
West  Riding  of  Yorkshire,9  which  were  rapidly  becoming 

1  Cf.  Davies,  Case  of  Labourers  in  Husbandry  (1795),  p.  83  ;   Arthur 
Young,  Annals  of  Agriculture,  xxv.  344,  484,  and  xxxvii.  448. 

2  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  viii.  (Vol.  I.  p.  82). 

3  Young,  Farmer's  Letters,  i.  207,  208  (edn.  1771). 

4  Ib.,  pp.  200,  297 ;  Eden,  State  of  the  Poor,  iii.  710. 

5  Young,  Travels  in  France,  ii.  313  (ed.  1793,  Dublin). 

6  Chamberlayne,  State  of  Great  Britain  (1737),  p.  177. 

7  See  his  Travels  in  France. 

8  See  The  Statistical  Journal,  xliii.  462. 

9  For  the  migration  of  population  from  Devonshire  and  the  "  cider  coun- 
ties" to  Yorkshire,  cf.  Massie's  Observations  on  the  New  Cyder  Tax  (1764), 


THE  EVE  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        333 

the  seats  of  the  cotton  and  coarse  woolleu  manufactures. 
Similarly  also  Staffordshire  and  Warwickshire,  the  pottery 
and  hardware  centres,  were  growing  in  numbers,1  and  so, 
too,  were  Durham  and  Northumberland,  whose  coal-fields 
were  now  far  more  developed  than  before.2  On  the  other 
hand,  the  population  of  the  Western  and  Eastern  counties, 
still  large  manufacturing  centres,  had  increased  very  little.8 
But  in  the  North  and  North-west  the  increase  was 
enormous.  Between  1685  and  1760  the  people  of  Liver- 
pool had  increased  tenfold,  of  Manchester  fivefold,  of 
Birmingham  and  Sheffield  sevenfold.4  The  total  population 
of  England  had  increased  from  the  five  millions  or  so  of  the 
Elizabethan  period,  to  not  much  less  than  eight  millions  in 
Arthur  Young's  time,6  and  far  more  of  these  were  in  the 
northern  portions  of  the  country  than  was  the  case  even  in 
Defoe's  time.  Defoe  said,  in  1725,  "  the  country  south  of 
the  Trent  is  by  far  the  largest,  as  well  as  the  richest  and 
most  populous."  6  But  forty  or  fifty  years  later  the  shifting 
towards  the  North  had  already  made  itself  felt7  The 
cause  of  the  great  increase  of  population  between  1700 
and  1760  is  to  be  found  in  the  rapid  increase  of  national 
wealth  gained  by  foreign  commerce,  and  in  the  progress  of 
home  manufactures  and  of  agriculture.  These  in  turn  led 
to  a  greater  demand  for  labour,  and,  in  consequence,  to 
higher  wages.  Increased  wealth  and  higher  wages  mean 
increased  comfort  in  living,  increased  command  of  food,  and 
consequently  better  chances  of  survival  among  children  born 
of  poor  parents.8  Now,  in  this  period  the  increase  in 
national  wealth  was,  in  spite  of  foreign  wars,  enormous  ; 
for  if  England  had  to  pay  heavily  for  these  wars,  other 
countries  had  to  pay  more  heavily  still,  and  were,  moreover, 

No.  4.  Cf.  also  Toynbee's  chapter  on  Population  in  his  Industrial  Revolu- 
tion, pp.  32  to  38. 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  35. 

a  76.,  p.  36.  '/&.,  p.  35. 

4  See  the  figures  in  Toynbee,  Ind.  Rev.,  p.  36. 

8  It  was  7,428,000  in  1770,  and  8,675,000  in  1790.  Statittical  Journal, 
xliii.  462.  •  Tour,  iii.  57  (7th  edn.). 

7  See  Toynbee's  careful  analysis,  Indust.  Rev. ,  p.  35. 

8  Cf.  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  viii.  (VoL  I.  pp.  84,  86, 
Clarendon  Press  edn.),  on  "  the  liberal  reward  of  labour." 


334  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  battle-grounds  of  contending  armies,  while  our  own  land 
was  at  least  free  from  invasion. 

§  200.  England  still  mainly  Agricultural. 

Of  the  population  of  the  country  at  this  time  the 
majority  were  still  engaged  in  agriculture,  and  the  agri- 
cultural labourers  alone  formed  one-third  of  the  working 
classes,  while  a  large  number  even  of  the  manufacturing 
classes  still  worked  in  the  fields  for  a  portion  of  the  year, 
especially  in  harvest  time.1  In  1770  England  was  still 
mainly  an  agricultural  country,  and  Arthur  Young  estimates 
that  the  income  of  the  agricultural  portion  of  the  nation 
was  larger  than  that  of  all  the  rest  of  the  community.  But 
it  must  be  remembered  that  by  far  the  largest  portion  of 
this  income  was  in  the  hands  of  the  great  landowners  and 
the  farmers,  the  share  of  the  labourer  being,  of  course,  much 
smaller.  Arthur  Young's  estimates  must  be  taken  with 
a  certain  amount  of  caution,  but  they  are  probably  approxi- 
mately correct,  and  are  certainly  interesting  as  giving  us 
a  very  fair  idea  of  the  distribution  of  occupations  and 
national  wealth  just  before  the  Industrial  Revolution. 
Hence  I  append  a  small  table,  giving  in  round  numbers 
the  figures  of  his  estimates.2  It  will  be  noticed  that  the 
number  of  the  population  is  rather  too  high,  but  the  pro- 
portion of  one  class  to  another  is  probably  correct. 

INCOMES  OF  VARIOUS  CLASSES.3 

IN   MILLION  POUNDS. 

5    |        Interest  on  capital  5 

6|  Paupers  T5 

Military  and  Official  5 

Professions  5 


10  •••         •••         •••     Commercial  10 


27  |     ...     Manufacturing  27 


Total  =  £119,500,000. 

1  Of.  above,  p.  330. 

2  Of.  Arthur  Young,  Northern  Tour,  iv.  543-547  (ed.  1770). 

3  The  lines  here  are  drawn  to  scale. 


THE  EVE  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        335 

POPULATION,   IN   MILLIONS. 


•5                   Paupers  45 

1        3 

•5                    »      ...     Military  and  official  '5 

•2  |                       Professional  '2 

•7                 ...         Commercial  '7 

Manufacturing  3 

Agricultural  3*  6 

J3-6 
Total =8,500,000. 

It  will  be  perceived  that  the  agriculturists,  though  only 
about  half  a  million  more  in  numbers  than  the  manufactur- 
ing classes,  had  a  far  larger  proportionate  income,  in  fact, 
more  than  double.  This  was  of  course  partly  due  to  the 
agricultural  improvements  of  this  period,  and  to  the  fact, 
that  manufactures  were  still  earned  on  almost  solely  by 
hand,  thus  giving  only  a  small  production  from  a  good 
many  workmen.  But  the  Industrial  Revolution  rapidly 
changed  all  this,  and  now  agriculture  is  no  longer  the  staple 
industry  of  the  country.  We  may  here  refer  to  what  has 
been  previously  mentioned  in  regard  to  the  agricultural 
development  on  enclosed  land,  and  to  the  superiority  of  the 
results  of  enclosures  over  those  of  the  common  fields.1  Those 
farmers  and  large  owners  who  understood  the  best  way  of 
raising  crops  prospered,  and  more  and  more  land  was 
enclosed  every  year  to  grow  corn  (which,  by  the  way,  was 
rapidly  rising  in  price),  clover,  turnips,  and  other  root- 
crops.  No  less  than  700  Enclosure  Acts2  were  passed 
between  1760  and  1774.  Corn  was  becoming  a  more 
valuable  crop  owing  to  the  increase  of  population,  and  now, 
for  the  first  time  in  English  history,  it  became  necessary  to 
import  it.8  The  old  common  fields  were  beginning  to 
disappear,  and  the  working  classes  also  lost  their  rights  of 
pasturing  cattle  on  the  wastes,  for  wastes  now  were  en- 

1  Above,  p.  275. 

2  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  476. 

*  The  period  1766  to  1773  is  said  to  have  been  the  time  when  our  imports 
first  began  to  exceed  our  exports  (West,  Price  of  Corn  (1826),  p.  10),  but 
Prothero,  Pioneers  of  Englinh  Farming,  p.  88,  says  that  it  was  not  till  1793 
that  the  imports  finally  out-balanced  the  exports. 


336  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

closed.1  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  old  common-field 
system  produced  very  poor  results,2  but  the  loss  of  his 
common  rights  was  very  disastrous  to  the  labourer,  for  it 
drove  him  from  the  land  at  the  same  time  as  the  growth 
of  manufactures  attracted  him  from  it,3  and  thus  the 
labourer  became  in  a  few  years  completely  divorced  from 
the  soil.  At  present  attempts  are  being  made  to  attract 
him  back  to  it  by  offering  him  small  strips  of  inferior  land 
at  a  high  rent.4  This  is  known  as  the  allotment  system. 
It  need  scarcely  be  said  that,  as  at  present  carried  out,  it  is 
hardly  likely  to  replace  the  almost  universal  allotments  of 
previous  times. 

§  201.   The  Domestic  System  of  Manufacture 

But  in  the  period  we  are  now  speaking  of,  the  period 
before  the  great  inventions,  neither  the  agricultural  labourer 
nor  the  manufacturing  operative  was  quite  divorced  from 
the  land.  The  weavers,  for  instance,  often  lived  in  the 
country,  in  a  cottage  with  some  land  attached  to  it.6  But 
in  other  respects  there  had  certainly  been  changes  in  the 
industrial  system  before  1760.  At  first  the  weaver  had 
furnished  himself  with  warp  and  weft,  worked  it  up,  and 
brought  it  to  the  market  himself;6  but  by  degrees  this 
system  grew  too  cumbersome,  and  the  yarn  was  given  out 
by  merchants  to  the  weaver,  and  at  last  the  merchant  got 
together  a  certain  number  of  looms  in  a  town  or  village, 
and  worked  them  under  his  own  supervision.7  But  even 
yet  the  domestic  system,  as  it  is  commonly  called,  retained 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  pp.  69,  101.  2  Above,  p.  275. 

3  Or,  when  they  did  not  attract  him  away,  they  took  from  him  to  a  very 
great  extent  his  bye-industries  of  spinning,  &c.     Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth 
of  Industry,  ii.  483. 

4  The  writer  was  much  blamed  for  this  remark  when  it  was  first  made  in 
1890.     But  he  cannot  see  any  reason  to  alter  it.     Allotment-land  is  not 
usually  the  best  in  a  parish,  though  labourers  often  get  very  good  results 
from  it;  and  the  rents  charged  are  certainly  far  in  excess  of  those  on 
farmers'  land.     For  rents  of  allotments  and  results  of  labour,  see  the 
article  by  Bolton  King,  Statistics  of  some  Midland  Villages,  in  the  Economic 
Journal  for  March  1893. 

8  "  Manufactures  were  little  concentrated  in  towns,  and  only  partially 
separated  from  agriculture."    Toynbee,  Indust.  Rev.,  p.  53. 
6  Toynbee,  «.  «.,  p.  54.  7  Ib. 


THE  EVE  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        337 

in  many  if  not  in  most  cases  the  distinctive  feature  that 
the  manufacturing  industry  was  not  the  only  industry  in 
which  the  artisan  was  engaged,  but  that  he  generally 
combined  with  it  a  certain  amount  of  agricultural  work  in 
the  cultivation  of  his  own  small  plot  of  land.1  This  fact 
explains  to  some  extent  the  comparative  comfort  of  the 
operative  in  this  cottage  industry,  for  that  they  were  fairly 
well  off  is  the  testimony  of  Adam  Smith,2  in  1776.  Com- 
mercial fluctuations  were  few,  and  the  home  market  was 
steady,  for  manufacturers — which  term  meant  both  a  master- 
manufacturer  and  an  ordinary  weaver — worked  not  so  much 
for  a  comparatively  unknown  and  vague  "  market "  as  for 
some  particular  customer,  or  for  some  well-known  local 
demand.  Instead  of  the  manufacturer  going  to  the  mer- 
chant, the  latter  often  came  to  the  manufacturer,  as  did 
the  London  merchants,  who  came  down  to  the  North- 
country  manufacturers,  paid  them  in  cash,  and  took 
away  their  purchases  themselves.3  On  the  other  hand, 
however,  we  have  the  picture  of  the  "  grass  farmers  "  near 
Leeds,  as  late  as  1793,  who  used  to  buy  the  wool  they 
worked,  and  go  through  the  whole  process  of  converting  it 
into  cloth,  and  go  to  market  twice  a  week  to  sell  it.4  This 
is  a  good  example  of  the  combination  of  agriculture  and 
manufactures  under  the  domestic  system.  It  is  noticeable 
also  that  capital,  though  it  existed  in  smaller  amounts,  was 
nevertheless  in  a  larger  number  of  hands.6  The  poet's 
vision  of  "  contentment  spinning  at  the  cottage  door  "  was 
not  altogether  imaginary,  for  women  and  children,  as  we 
have  seen,  shared  in  the  common  task  brought  home  by  the 
head  of  the  family.  The  enormous  difference  between  the 

1  This  had  been  the  case  also  in  Elizabethan  times,  for  §  23  of  the  Act  5 
Eliz. ,  c.  4,  shows  that  the  weaving  of  linen  and  household  cloth  was  often 
combined  with  agriculture.  For  cloth-weaving  carried  on  in  the  mansions 
of  the  nobility  and  gentry,  cf.  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History, 
p.  84.  See  also  W.  Radclifle's  interesting  evidence  in  Baines,  Cotton 
Manufacture,  p.  337. 

a  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  viii.  (Vol.  I.  p.  82,  Clarendon  Press 
edition). 

*  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  55. 

4  Young,  Annals  of  Agriculture,  xxvii.  309. 

8  Cf.  Toynbee,  Indust.  Revolution,  p.  62. 

Y 


338  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

old  domestic  system  and  the  modern  factory  methods  may 
be  illustrated  from  the  pottery  manufacture  by  a  quotation 
which  certainly  does  not  err  in  affording  too  bright  a  view 
of  the  former.  "  In  the  wilder  districts  of  the  moorlands  a 
pot-work  would  be  carried  on  by  the  joint  exertions  of  a 
single  man  and  his  son  or  a  labourer.  The  one  dug  the 
necessary  clay,  the  other  fashioned  and  lined  the  ware, 
whilst  the  mother  or  daughter,  when  the  goods  were  ready, 
loaded  the  panniered  asses  and  took  her  way  to  distant 
town  and  hamlet  till  her  merchandise  was  sold.  She  then 
returned  with  shop-goods  to  the  solitary  pot-work."  l  This 
was  the  domestic  system  in  its  most  elementary  form,  and 
is  a  curious  contrast  to  the  conditions  which  prevail  in  the 
present  pottery  factories  of  Staffordshire. 

But,  even  in  this  simple  state  of  industry,  trade  was  by 
no  means  so  restricted  and  hampered  as  some  writers  have 
seemed  to  suppose.  On  the  contrary,  there  was,  in  spite  of 
bad  roads,2  very  frequent  and  considerable  internal  com- 
munication for  manufacturing  purposes,  and  this  was 
facilitated  by  means  of  the  local  fairs  and  markets,  the 
importance  of  which  in  those  days  cannot  be  easily  over- 
rated. Manufacturers  would  ride  a  long  way  to  buy  wool 
from  the  farmers,  or  at  the  great  fairs  already  mentioned, 
such  as  that  of  Stourbridge,3  which  was  sufficiently  con- 
siderable even  a  hundred  years  ago,  or  those  of  Lynn, 
Boston,  Gainsborough,  and  Beverley,  all  four  of  which 
were  celebrated  for  their  wool-sales.4  This  wool  was 
brought  home  and  sorted,  then  sent  out  to  the  hand- 
combers,5  and  on  being  returned  combed  was  again  sent 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  170. 

2  On  the  subject  of  roads  there  is  somewhat  conflicting  evidence.  Arthur 
Young  constantly  refers  to  the  villainous  character  of  the  roads  he  tra- 
versed, at  the  very  time  when  Henry  Homer  (in  1767)  was  praising  the 
improved  character  of  all  means  of  communication  (An  Enquiry  into  the 
Means  of  Preserving  the  Publick  Roads).      The  apparent  discrepancy  is 
probably  due  to  the  fact  that  there  was  no  uniformity  in  the  country,  and 
some  roads  were  much  worse  than  others  ;  cf.  W.  C.  Sydney,  England  in 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  1-43,  and  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii. 
374-378. 

3  Above,  p.  143.  4  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  55. 
8  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  159,  mentions  how  master  wool- 


THE  EVE  OF  THE  REVOLUTION        339 

out,  often  to  long  distances,  to  be  spun.  It  was,  for 
instance,  sent  from  Yorkshire  to  Lancashire,  and  gangs  of 
pack-horses  laden  with  wool  were  always  to  be  met  plod- 
ding over  the  hills  between  these  two  counties.1  In  the 
same  way  silk  was  sent  from  London  to  Kendal  and  back.2 
When  spun,  the  tops,  or  fine  wool,  were  entrusted  to  some 
shopkeeper  to  "  put  out "  among  the  neighbours.8  Then 
the  yarn  was  brought  back  and  sorted  by  the  manufacturer 
himself  into  hanks,  according  to  the  counts  and  twists. 
The  hand-weavers  would  next  come  for  their  warp  and 
weft,  and  in  due  time  bring  back  the  piece,  which 
often  was  sent  elsewhere  to  be  dyed.  Finally,  the 
finished  cloth  was  sent  to  be  sold  at  the  fairs,  or  at  the 
local  "  piece  halls "  of  such  central  towns  as  Leeds  or 
Halifax.* 

Hence  it  will  be  seen  that  there  was  a  considerable 
diffusion5  of  work  under  the  old  system,  and  it  was  not 
necessary  for  great  numbers  of  people  to  live  close  together, 
or  to  work  in  factories  upon  a  large  scale.  Things  were  done 
with  greater  leisure,  and  more  time  was  taken  over  them. 
It  was  possible,  and  it  seemed  even  desirable,  to  regulate 
the  industries  of  the  country  in  a  manner  which  now  would 
be  regarded  as  both  harmful  and  futile.  For  with  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  English  industry  outgrew  the  various 
regulations  and  conditions  which  had  been  previously 
placed  upon  it.6  The  regulations  of  apprenticeship,  for 
instance,  which  were  supposed  to  guarantee  to  some  extent 

combers  would  buy  wool  from  the  staplers,  and  give  it  out  to  hand  wool- 
combers  for  combing. 

1  Smiles,  Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Metcalfe  and  Telford),  p.  31. 

a  Young,  Northern  Tour,  iii.  171,  173  (ed.  1770). 

8  So  in  Huntingdonshire  in  1793,  A.  Young  says,  "  women  and  children 
may  have  constant  employment  in  spinning  yarn,  which  is  put  out  by  the 
generality  of  the  country  shopkeepers."  Annals  of  Agriculture,  xxi.  170  ; 
cf.  also  Radcliffe  in  Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  p.  338. 

4  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  54. 

8  "  In  1790  there  were  thirty  cloth  factories  in  Wai-minster,  all  busy  and 
prosperous.  They  were  not  factories  in  the  present  sense,  but,  rather, 
clothing  shops,  in  which  only  the  finishing  processes  were  effected,  spin- 
ning, carding,  warping,  and  weaving  being  carried  on  in  cottages  over  a  large 
area  in  the  towns  and  in  the  country  villages,  as  ffty  or  sixty  years  before 
in  farmhouses."  Daniell's  History  of  Warminster  (1879),  p.  130. 

'  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  258. 


340  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  skill  and  training  of  the  individual  workman,  became 
obsolete,  even  in  those  trades  to  which  they  had  been 
formerly  applied,  when  the  introduction  of  machinery 
caused  the  skill  of  the  workman  to  become  of  less  import- 
ance than  the  delicacy  of  the  machine.  The  old  conditions 
of  industry  merely  hampered  the  new  factory  owners,  and, 
therefore,  were  rapidly  cast  aside.  An  entirely  new  order 
of  things  arose.  With  the  Industrial  Revolution  came  all 
the  hurry  and  stress  of  modern  manufacturing  life,  and  a 
complete  change  took  place  in  the  manner  and  methods  of 
manufacture.  And  now,  having  seen  how  things  stood 
immediately  before  this  great  change,  we  can  proceed  at 
once  to  the  means  by  which  it  was  brought  about. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS 

§  202.   The  Suddenness  of  the  Revolution  and  its 
Importance. 

THE  change,  which  has  been  briefly  sketched  in  the  pre- 
vious chapter,  from  the  domestic  system  of  industry  to  the 
modern  system  of  production  by  machinery  and  steam  power 
was  sudden  and  violent.  The  great  inventi6ns  were  all 
made  in  a  comparatively  short  space  of  time,  and  the 
previous  slow  growth  of  industry  developed  quickly  into  a 
feverish  burst  of  manufacturing  production  that  completely 
revolutionised  the  face  of  industrial  England.  In  little  more 
than  twenty  years  all  the  great  inventions  of  Watt,  Ark- 
wright,  and  Boulton  had  been  completed,  steam  had  been 
applied  to  the  new  looms,  and  the  modern  factory  system 
had  fairly  begun.  Of  course  this  system  was  not  adopted 
by  the  country  immediately  or  universally.  In  some  trades 
the  old  domestic  system  persisted  longer  than  in  others, 
and  weaving  by  hand-looms,  for  instance,  was  still  practised 
as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.1  But  on 
the  whole  the  transition  was  accomplished  with  comparative 
rapidity,  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  change  in  the  industrial 
system  brought  great  misery  as  well  as  great  economic 
advantages.  Nothing  has  done  more  to  make  England 
what  she  at  present  is — whether  for  better  or  worse — than 
this  sudden  and  silent  Industrial  Revolution,  for  it  increased 
her  wealth  tenfold,  and  gave  her  half  a  century's  start  in 
front  of  the  nations  of  Europe.  The  French  Revolution 
took  place  about  the  same  time,  and  as  it  was  performed 

1  Writing  in  1885,  a  Yorkshire  author  says,  "as  recently  as  twenty-five 
to  thirty  years  ago  the  manufacture  of  heavy  woollen  cloth  was  done  by 
hand- weaving."  Thomas  Illingworth,  Distribution  Reform,  p.  16.  This, 
however,  was  hardly  general  so  late. 

34> 


342  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

amid  streams  of  blood  and  flame,  it  attracted  the  attention 
of  historians,  many  of  whom  have  apparently  yet  to  learn 
that  bloodshed  and  battles  are  merely  the  incidents  of 
history.  The  French  Eevolution  also  succeeded  in  giving 
birth  to  one  of  the  world's  military  heroes,  and  a  military 
hero  naturally  excites  the  enthusiasm  of  the  multitude. 
Yet  even  the  French  Revolution  was  the  result  of  economic 
causes  that  had  been  operating  for  centuries,  and  which  had 
had  their  effect  in  England  four  hundred  years  before,  at  the 
time  of  the  Peasants'  Revolt.  These  economic  causes  have 
been  rather  kept  in  the  background  by  most  historians, 
who  have  preferred  to  dwell  upon  the  antics  of  French 
politicians  and  revolutionaries,  many  of  whom  have  gained 
a  quite  undeserved  importance ;  and  it  was  hardly  to  be 
expected  that  writers  should  recognise  the  operation  of  such 
causes  in  England,  more  especially  as  their  effects  were  not 
accentuated  by  political  fireworks,  but  were  even  partially 
hidden  by  subsequent  events  resulting  from  these  effects. 
Men  were  blinded,  too,  by  an  increase  in  the  wealth  of  the 
richer  portion  of  the  nation,  not  even  seeing  whence  that 
wealth  proceeded,  and  quite  ignoring  the  fact  that  it  was 
accompanied  by  serious  poverty  among  the  industrial 
classes.1  Nor  did  historians  perceive  that  the  world- 
famous  wars  in  which  England  was  engaged  at  the  close  of 
the  last  century,  and  up  to  1815,  were  necessitated  by  her 
endeavour  to  gain  the  commercial  supremacy  of  the  world,2 
after  she  had  invented  the  means  of  supplying  the  world's 
markets  to  overflowing.  Economic  causes  were  at  the  root 
of  them  all.  We  shall  discuss  later  the  connection  between 
our  foreign  politics  and  our  industry  ;  and  we  must  not 

1  This  is  recognised  by  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  443,  who 
remarks,  "  while  the  gains  of  some  of  the  owners  of  capital  were  sometimes 
enormous,  the  labourers  were  forced  to  a  lower  level  of  life."     Cf.  also 
Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  93. 

2  Seeley,  Expansion  of  England,  ch.  ii.,  only  partially  recognises  this, 
though  he  is  pre-eminent  for  his  accurate  view  of  the  eighteenth  century 
wars.     But  he  attributes  too  much  weight  to  colonial  expansion,  and  not 
enough  to  industrial  and  mercantile  influences.     England   was   striving 
almost  as  much  for  a  market  as  for  colonial  power.     See  Rogers,  Economic 
Interpretation,  p.  323,  and  the  chapter  (xv.)  on  colonial  trade  and  markets 
and  wars. 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS  343 

forget  that,  besides  this  revolution  in  manufactures,  there 
was  one  equally  important  in  agriculture.1  But  with  this 
we  must  deal  afterwards  ;  at  present  we  must  adhere  to 
the  subject  of  the  development  of  industry  by  the  great 
inventors. 

§  203.   The  Great  Inventors. 

The  transition  from  the  domestic  to  the  factory  system  was 
begun  by  four  great  inventions.  In  1 7  7  0  James  Hargreaves,2  a 
carpenter  and  weaver  of  Standhill,  near  Blackburn,  patented 
the  spinning-jenny,  i.e.  a  frame  with  a  number  of  spindles 
side  by  side,  which  were  fed  by  machinery,  and  by  which 
many  threads  might  be  spun  at  once,  instead  of  only  one,  as 
had  been  the  case  in  the  old  one-thread  hand  spinning-wheel.3 
Hargreaves  first  used  this  "  jenny "  for  some  time  in  his 
own  house,  and  was  at  once  enabled  to  spin  eight  times  as 
much  yarn  as  before  by  using  eight  spindles  ;  but  after- 
wards 16,  then  20  and  30  were  used,  and  even  120.4  In 
1771  Arkwright5  established  a  successful  mill  at  Cromford 
en  the  Derwent,  in  which  he  employed  his  patent  spinning 
machine,  or  "  water-frame,"  an  improvement  upon  a  former 
invention  of  Wyatt's,  which  derived  its  name  from  the  fact 
that  it  was  worked  by  water-power.6  A  few  years  later 
(1779)  both  these  inventions  were  superseded  by  that  of 
Samuel  Crompton,  a  spinner,  but  the  son  of  a  farmer  near 
Bolton,7  who  added  domestic  spinning  and  weaving  to  agri- 
culture. His  machine,  the  "  mule,"  combined  and  added 
to  the  principles  of  both  the  previous  inventions,  and  was 
called  by  this  name  as  being  the  hybrid  offspring  of  its 
mechanical  predecessors.8  It  drew  out  the  roving  (i.e.  the 

1  Below,  p.  430. 

*  See  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  (ed.  Leslie  Stephen)  for  a  concise 
life. 

*  The  jenny  was  invented  about  1764,  but  not  patented  till  12th  July 
1770 :  for  a  description  see  Balnea,  Hist.  Cotton  Manufacture,  pp.  157-8. 

4  Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  p.  159. 
8  See  Diet.  National  Biography  (ed.  Leslie  Stephen). 
8  Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  p.  153,  and  description,  pp.  151-153.     He 
first  tried  horse-power,  but  it  was  too  expensive. 
1  Diet.  Nat.  Biography,  xiii.  148. 
8  Baines,  Cotton  Manf.,  p.  197. 


344  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

raw  material  when  it  has  received  its  first  twist)  by  an 
adaptation  of  the  water  frame,  and  then  passed  it  on  to  be 
finished  and  twisted  into  complete  yarn  by  an  adaptation  of 
the  spinning-jenny.1  This  invention  effected  an  enormous 
increase  in  production,  for  nowadays  12,000  spindles  are 
often  worked  by  it  at  once  and  by  one  spinner.2  It  dates 
from  the  year  1779,  and  was  so  successful  that  by  1811 
more  than  four  and  a  half  million  spindles  worked  by 
"  mules  "  were  in  use  in  various  English  factories.3  Like 
many  inventors,  Crompton  died  in  poverty4  in  1827. 

These  three  inventions,  however,  only  increased  the  power 
of  spinning  the  raw  material  into  yarn.  What  was  now 
wanted  was  a  machine  that  would  perform  a  similar  service 
for  weaving.  This  was  discovered  by  Dr  Edmund  Cart- 
wright,  a  Kentish  clergyman,  and  was  patented  as  the 
"power-loom"  in  April  1785,5  though  it  had  afterwards 
to  undergo  many  improvements,6  and  did  not  begin  to  be 
much  used  till  1813.  But  the  principle  of  it  was  there, 
and  it  was  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  old  domestic  system.  For  at  first  only  spinning 
was  done  by  machinery,  while  the  weavers  could  still  do  their 
work  by  hand  in  the  old  methods ;  and,  indeed,  they  con- 
tinued to  do  so  till  a  comparatively  recent  period,  and  many 
aged  people  in  Northern  manufacturing  districts  can  still 
remember  the  old  weaving  industry,  as  carried  on  in  the 
workmen's  own  houses.7  But  the  improvements  on  Cart- 
wright's  invention  ultimately  did  away  with  the  hand- 
weaver,  as  the  others  had  abolished  the  hand-spinner,  and 
the  old  form  of  industry  was  doomed. 

Its  death-blow,  however,  was  yet  to  come.     Wondrous  as 

1  Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  p.  198. 

8  Romance,  of  Trade,  p.  188.  '  Ib.,  p.  189. 

4  Diet.  Nat.  Biography,  xiii.  150. 

5  Burnley,   Wool  and  Woolcombing,  p.  Ill;  Baines,  Cotton  Man/.,  229, 
230 ;  Diet.  Nat.  Biography,  ix.  221. 

6  Cartwright's  own  attempts  to  work  his  invention  were  unremunerative, 
and  it  was  not  till  1801  that  mills  were  started  at  Glasgow,  where  it  was 
worked  successfully.     Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  p.  231  ;  Horrocks  of 
Southport  introduced  further  improvements  in  1805  and  1813.     Baines, 
«.  «.,  pp.  234  and  235-237. 

7  Cf.  previous  note  on  page  341  above. 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS     345 

were  the  changes  introduced  by  the  machines  just  spoken 
of,  none  of  them  would  by  themselves  alone  have  revolu- 
tionised our  manufacturing  industries.  Power  of  some  kind 
was  needed  to  work  them,  and  water-power,1  though  used 
at  first,  was  insufficient,  and  not  always  available.  It  was 
the  application  of  steam  to  manufacturing  processes  which 
finally  completed  the  Industrial  Revolution.  In  1769, 
the  year  in  which  Wellington  and  Bonaparte  were  born, 
James  Watt  took  out  his  patent  for  the  steam  engine.2  It 
was  first  used  as  an  auxiliary  in  mining  operations,  but  in 
1785  it  was  introduced  into  factories,  a  Nottinghamshire 
cotton-spinner3  having  one  set  up  in  his  works  at  Papple- 
wick,  which  had  previously  been  run  only  by  water-power. 
Of  course  the  enormous  advantages  of  steam  over  water- 
power  soon  became  apparent ;  manufacturers,  especially  in 
the  cotton  trade,  hastened  to  make  use  of  the  new  methods, 
and  in  fifteen  years  (1788-1803)  the  cotton  trade  trebled 
itself.4 

It  may  be  here  remarked  that  most  of  the  inventions 
and  improvements  were  made  first  in  the  machinery  used 
for  making  cotton  cloth,  and  were  only  subsequently  intro- 
duced into  the  woollen  manufacture.  Thus  the  spinning 
jenny,  patented  in  1770,  was  not  used  for  woollen  cloth- 
making  till  1791  or  a  little  later,6  though  it  seems  that 
machinery  was  used  in  the  woollen  cloth  trade  for  some  of 
the  preparatory  processes,  such  as  carding,  and  even  spin- 
ning,6 about  1793.  Moreover,  in  any  trade,  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  new  inventions  was  not  either  simultaneous  or 
unanimous.  Manufactures  before  the  Industrial  Revolution 
were,  as  we  have  seen,  very  widely  diffused 7  throughout 
the  country,  and  consequently  in  some  districts  improve- 

1  E.g.  in  Boulton's  works  at  Soho  ;  Smiles,  Lives  of  Boulton  and  Watt, 
p.  130.  Horses  were  even  used.  Ib. 

8  Smiles,  Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Boulton  and  Watt),  p.  98. 

3  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  90.  *  76. 

8  Spinning  jennies  were  in  use  at  Barnstaple  and  Ottery  St  Mary  in  1791 
(Young,  Annals  of  Agriculture,  xv.  494),  also  machinery  at  Kendal  (»'&., 
zv.  497).  Benjamin  Gott  is  said  to  have  first  introduced  the  jenny  into 
the  woollen  manufacture  at  Leeds  in  1800  ;  Bischoff,  Woollen  Manufactures, 
1315. 

6  Cf.  Young,  Annals  of  Agriculture,  xxvii.  310.      7  Above,  page  338, 339. 


346  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

ments  were  introduced  which  did  not  come  into  use  in 
others  till  several  years  later.1  Nevertheless  the  great 
change  proceeded  on  the  whole  with  remarkable  rapidity, 
and  nowhere  was  it  more  noticeable  than  in  the  cotton 
trade.  The  manufacture  of  cotton  cloth  is  comparatively 
modern  in  England,  for  it  was  probably  not  introduced 
until  the  early  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,2  and  some 
confusion  is  caused  in  people's  minds  because  "  cottons " 
are  heard  of  before  this  date,3  But  the  "  cottons "  of 
earlier  times  were  made  entirely  of  wool,4  and  must  have 
been  only  a  weak  imitation  of  real  cotton  cloth.  In  a 
work5  by  Lewis  Roberts,  a  well-known  writer  on  trade, 
published  in  1641,  we  read,  however:  "The  town  of 
Manchester  in  Lancashire  must  also  be  herein  remembered, 
and  worthily,  for  their  encouragement  commended  ;  .  .  .  . 
for  they  buy  cotton  wool  in  London  that  comes  first  from 
Cyprus  and  Smyrna,  and  at  home  work  the  same  and 
perfect  it  into  fustians,  vermilions,  dimities,  and  other 
stuffs,  and  then  return  it  to  London,  where  the  same  is 
vented  and  sold,  and  not  seldom  into  foreign  parts."  Here 
we  have  probably  the  first  notice  of  the  making  of  real 
cotton  cloth  ;  but  even  in  this  case  only  the  weft  was 
cotton  thread,  while  the  warp  consisted  of  linen  yarn, 
principally  imported  from  Germany  and  Ireland ; 6  for 
there  was  no  machinery  in  use  fine  enough  to  weave 
cotton  only,  nor  had  English  weavers  the  inherited  skill 
of  the  Oriental  workmen.  Hence  the  cotton  manufacture 
did  not  make  much  progress,  and  the  amount  of  cotton 
wool  imported  annually  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  was  only  about  a  million  pounds ; 7  while  the  entire 

1  Cunningham  also  notes  this  :  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  450. 

2  See  article  Cotton  in  M'Culloch's   Commercial  Dictionary,  ed.   1844, 
p.  430  ;  also  Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  pp.  89-112. 

8  Defoe  was  thus  misled  into  thinking  the  cotton  manufacture  earlier 
than  the  woollen  ;  Tour,  iii.  246. 

4  This  is  proved  by  the  Act  5  and  6  Edward  VI.,  c.  6  (1552),  which  was, 
"  for  the  true  making  of  woollen  cloth,"  and  yet  includes  "  the  cloths, 
called  Manchester,  Lancashire,  and  Cheshire  cottons." 

8  Treasure  of  Traffic  (1641),  p.  32. 

6  M'Culloch's  Commercial  Dictionary,  Cotton,  p.  430. 

7  Ib.,  Table,  p.  432. 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS     347 

value  of  all  cotton  goods  manufactured  in  Great  Britain  at 
the  accession  of  George  III.  (1760)  was  estimated  at  only 
£200,000  a  year.1  But  the  progress  of  the  Industrial 
Revolution  in  the  cotton  trade  may  be  seen  from  the 
rapid  increase  of  the  import  of  raw  cotton  from  this  time 
onwards.  From  a  little  over  one  million  pounds  (weight) 
it  rose  rapidly  to  over  four  million  in  1771-75,  between 
six  and  eleven  million  from  1776-84,  to  eighteen  million 
pounds  in  1785,  and  fifty-six  million  pounds  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  century  (1800).2 

§  204.   The  Revolution  in  Manufactures  and  the 
Factories. 

But  although  the  Industrial  Revolution  was  at  first  most 
marked  in  the  manufacture  of  cotton,  it  rapidly  extended 
to  that  of  woollen  and  linen  fabrics.  It  is  impossible  here, 
as  well  as  unnecessary,  to  describe  all  the  various  modifica- 
tions and  adaptations  that  were  made  in  the  various 
machines ;  we  can  only  refer  to  the  general  features  of 
the  great  change.  The  most  remarkable  of  these  was 
the  sudden  growth  of  factories,  chiefly,  of  course,  at  first  for 
spinning  cotton  or  woollen  yarn.  The  old  factories  had 
perforce  been  planted  by  the  side  of  some  running  stream, 
often  in  a  lonely  and  deserted  spot,  very  inconvenient  for 
markets  and  the  procuring  of  labour  ;  but  necessarily  so 
placed  for  the  sake  of  the  water.3  Hence  at  first  there 
was  no  reason  to  concentrate  large  numbers  of  mill-hands 
in  towns,  as  is  necessary  now.  Those  of  my  readers  who 
know  Yorkshire  or  Lancashire  fairly  well,  may  remember 
how  frequently,  in  the  course  of  some  long  country  walk 
near  Bradford,  Halifax,  Leeds,  or  Manchester,  they  come 
upon  the  ruins  of  some  old  mill,  crumbling  beside  a  rushing 
stream,  a  silent  relic  of  the  old  days  before  the  use  of 
steam.  How  wonderful  must  the  first  rude  inventions  have 
seemed  to  the  workers  in  those  old  factories,  as  the  strange 
new  machinery  rattled  and  shook  in  the  quiet  country 

1  Estimated  by  Dr  Percival,  of  Manchester  ;  M'Culloch,  it.  a.,  p.  430. 
•  Tables  in  M'Culloch's  Commercial  Dictionary,  p.  432  (ed.  1844). 
'  Above,  r>.  345  ;  cf.  Taylor,  Modern  Factory  System,  p.  85. 


348  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

hollows,  and  the  becks  and  streamlets  ran  down  to  turn  the 
new  spindles  and  looms  that  were  to  revolutionise  the  face 
of  agricultural  England.  But  the  old  water-mills  gave  way 
to  others  worked  by  steam  power,  and  now  it  was  no  longer 
necessary  to  choose  any  particular  site  for  the  works,  if  only 
plenty  of  coal  was  available.  So  the  new  race  of  manufac- 
turers made  haste  to  run  up  steam-factories  wherever  they 
could.  "  Old  barns  and  cart-houses,"  says  Eadcliffe,1  who 
wrote  on  the  new  manufactures,  "  outbuildings  of  all  de- 
scriptions were  repaired  ;  windows  broke  through  the  old 
blank  walls,  and  all  were  fitted  up  for  loom-shops  ;  new 
weavers'  cottages  arose  in  every  direction."  The  merchants, 
too,  who  did  not  run  factories  on  their  own  account,  but 
merely  purchased  yarn,  began  to  collect  weavers  around 
them  in  great  numbers,  to  get  looms  together  in  a  work- 
shop, and  to  give  out  warp  themselves  to  the  workpeople.2 
And  now  the  workers  began  to  feel  the  difference  between 
the  old  system  and  the  new.  Formerly  they  often  used  to 
buy  for  themselves  the  yarn  they  were  to  weave,  and  had  a 
direct  interest  in  the  cloth  they  made  from  it,  which  was 
their  own  property.  They  were,  in  fact,  economically  inde- 
pendent. The  new  system  made  them  dependent  upon  the 
merchant  or  upon  the  mill-owner.3  At  first,  it  is  true, 
they  gained  a  rise  in  wages,  for  the  increase  in  production 
was  so  great  that  labour  was  continually  in  demand,  and 
every  family,  says  Radcliffe,4  brought  home  forty  to  one 
hundred  and  twenty  shillings  per  week.  But  this  did  not 
last  very  long.5  The  new  machinery  soon  threw  out  of 
employment  a  number  of  those  who  had  worked  only  by 
hand ;  it  enabled  women  and  children  to  do  the  work  of 

1  Quoted  by  Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  pp.  338,  339.     W.  Radcliffe's 
book  is  entitled,  "The  Origin  of  the  New  System  of  Manufacture,  com- 
monly called  '  Power  Loom  Weaving,'  and  the  purposes  for  which  this 
system  was  invented  and  brought  into  use  fully  explained  in  a  Narrative." 
It  was  published  in  1828. 

2  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  91. 

3  Ib.     "  The  system  meant  a  change  from  independence  to  dependence  " 
(p.  91). 

4  In  Baines,  Cotton  Manufacture,  p.  339. 

5  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vi.   205,  remarks  that  the 
condition  of  the  labourers  began  to  deteriorate  about  1792. 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT   INVENTIONS     349 

grown  men ;  it  made  all  classes  of  workers  dependent  upon 
capitalist  employers  ;  and  it  introduced  an  era  of  hitherto 
unheard-of  competition.  The  coming  of  the  capitalists 
had  become  an  accomplished  fact,  and  with  it  began  also 
the  exploitation  of  labour.  Of  this  we  shall  speak  in 
another  chapter.1  Other  national  changes  now  demand  our 
attention. 

§  205.   The  Growth  of  Population  and  the  Development 
of  the  Northern  Districts. 

Two  of  the  most  striking  facts  of  the  Industrial  Revolu- 
tion are  the  great  growth  and  the  equally  great  shifting  of 
the  population.  These  have  been  already  briefly  alluded 
to,  but  a  few  further  details  must  now  be  added.  Before 
1751  the  largest  decennial  increase  of  population  had  been 
about  5  or  6  per  cent.2  But  for  each  of  the  next  three 
periods  of  ten  years  the  increase  became  rapidly  greater, 
till  in  1801  it  was  14  per  cent,  on  the  previous  ten  years, 
and  reached  even  21  £  per  cent.8  in  the  period  1801  to 
1811.  This  last  was  the  highest  rate  ever  reached  in 
England,  and  is  more  than  double  that  recorded  in  the 
census*  of  1881  or  1891.  The  population  of  England 
had  been  under  7,000,000  in  1760  ;5  by  1821  it  had 
risen6  to  about  12,000,000,  and  at  the  present  moment 
it  is  rather  more  than  double  that  number.7 

At  the  same  time,  the  great  migration  to  the  North, 
already  begun  before  the  Revolution,  was  now  accelerated 
and  completed.  The  main  cause  of  it  was  the  utilisation 
of  the  coalfields  for  fuel  to  turn  the  new  machinery  in  the 
factories.  Hitherto  the  counties  which  contained  the  vast 

1  Below,  p.  381  sqq. 

1  Cf.  the  figures  for  each  decennium  in  the  Statistical  Journal,  xliii.  462  ; 
also  cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  87,  but  he  is  inaccurate. 

1  See  the  careful  tables  in  M'Culloch's  Commercial  Dictionary  (1844),  s.  v. 
Population  ;  also  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vi.  201. 

4  It  was  10-8  per  cent,  in  1871-81,  and  in  1881-91  only  8'2  per  cent. 
(United  Kingdom)  Census  Returns,  1891. 

6  Exact  figure  6,736,000  (England  and  Wales).  Statistical  Journal, 
xliii.  462. 

6  Exact  figure  12,000,236.     Ib. 

7  Exact  figure  27,482,104  (England  only)  in  1891 ;  Census  Returns. 


350  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

coal  deposits,  to  which  England  owes  so  much  of  her  pro- 
gress, had  been  neglected,  but  now  that  the  wealth  that 
underlay  them  was  understood,1  they  became  the  natural 
home  of  manufacturing  industries.2  But  it  may  be  noticed 
that,  even  previously  to  the  utilisation  of  coal,  industry  had 
been  attracted  to  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire  because  these 
counties,  with  the  numerous  streams  running  down  from 
their  moors,  offered  a  better  supply  of  water  power  than  the 
Southern  or  Eastern  districts.  There  is  little  doubt  also 
that  the  rainy  climate3  of  the  North-West  of  England 
offered  greater  facilities  for  certain  branches  of  the  cotton 
and  woollen  trades  than  the  drier  Eastern  counties,  at  any 
rate,  possessed.  The  considerations  of  physical  geography 
as  well  as  of  geology  show  us  that,  under  the  new  condi- 
tions of  manufacture,  the  North-Western  counties  were 
obviously  fitted  for  the  great  industrial  part  they  were  now 
to  play  in  the  life  of  the  nation. 

These  districts,  which  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  even  later 
had,  as  we  saw,  been  comparatively  deserted,4  now  became 
and  have  since  remained  the  most  populous  and  flourishing 
of  all.  The  centres  of  the  new  factory  system  were  now 
naturally  in  the  North,  and  thither  flocked  the  workers  who 
had  formerly  been  distributed  over  England  in  a  much  more 
extensive  manner,  or  who  had  clustered  round  the  great 
Eastern  and  South-Western  centres  of  industry,  which 
before  1760  had  excelled  the  other  centre,  the  West  Riding, 
in  prosperity.5  But  now  this  was  changed.  Before  the 
Revolution,  the  Eastern  counties,  more  especially  about 
Norwich  and  the  surrounding  districts,  had  been  famous  for 
their  manufactures  of  crapes,  bombazines,  and  other  fine, 
slight  stuffs.6  In  the  West  of  England  the  towns  of  Brad- 

1  Macaulay,  History,  ch.  iii.,  rightly  calls  them  "  a  source  of  wealth  more 
precious  than  the  gold  mines  of  Peru. " 

2  We  may  here  compare  Ramsay's  remarks  in  his  Physical  Otology  and 
Geography  of  Great  Britain,  pp.  305,  306  (ed.  1872). 

3  For  statistics  of  rainfall,  cf.  Ramsay,  u.  s.,  pp.  197-199. 

4  Above,  p.  107  ;  cf.  also  Macaulay's  well-known  but  rather  exaggerated 
description  of  the  North  of  England,  History,  ch.  iii. 

5  Defoe's  Tour,  iii.  57  (ed.  1769).    Macaulay,  History,  ch.  iii.,  "  A  constant 
stream  of  emigrants  began  to  roll  northward." 

6  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  47,  summarises  these  well-known  facts. 


1700-50 

INDUSTRIAL 


Jhj>n>uyfl>pula£i0n,m  first 
of  Ji^Gerdwy,  chucfiotfns,  c 
manufactures  The,mostpopiu 
counties  are.  SarH.yrefft  . 


SEA 


C  H   ^ 


N  * 


Scale  of  English  Miles 

O     10     30    SO    tO    tO  IS 


The  majority  of  the  population  was  in  the  west  and   south    central   coi 
(dark  green) ;  but  Lanes,  and   the   West    Riding   of  Yorks.    were   increasing 
chief  manufacturing  centres  in   (1)  Eastern    counties,  (2)  Wilts..  (8)  Yorks.,  &c 
shown*  thus  W  %   but    it    must   be    remembered    that    manufactures   were 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS  351 

ford-on-Avon,  Devizes,  and  Warminster  had  been  manufac- 
turing centres  noted  for  their  fine  serges ;  Stroud  had  been 
the  centre  of  the  manufacture  of  dyed  cloth,1  and  so  was 
Taunton,  for  even  in  Defoe's  time  (1725)  it  had  1100 
looms ; 2  and  the  excellence  of  the  Cotswold  wool,  together 
with  the  water  power  derived  from  its  mountain  streams, 
had  done  much  for  the  industry  of  the  district.8  These 
centres  and  their  productions,  then,  were  far  more  famous 
than  the  third,  the  West  Riding,  including  the  towns  of 
Halifax,  Leeds,  and  Bradford,  where  chiefly  coarse  cloths 
were  made.4  The  cotton  trade  of  Lancashire,  too,  had 
previously  been  insignificant,  for  it  is  only  incidentally 
mentioned  by  Adam  Smith,6  though  Manchester  and  Bolton 
were  then,  as  now,  its  headquarters.  In  1760  only  40,000 
persons  were  engaged  in  it,6  while  in  1764  the  value  of  our 
cotton  exports  was  only  one-twentieth  of  our  woollen,7  and 
only  strong  cottons,  such  as  dimities  and  fustians,  were 
made.  But  now  the  cotton  cities  of  Lancashire,  and  the 
woollen  and  worsted  factories  of  Yorkshire,  far  surpass  the 
older  8  seats  of  industry  in  wealth  and  population,  while  the 
cotton  export  has  risen  to  be  the  first  in  the  kingdom,  and 
the  vast  majority  of  the  industrial  population  is  now  found 
North  of  the  Trent  These  great  industrial  changes  were 
the  direct  consequence  of  the  introduction  of  new  manufac- 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  47,  and  see  note  5  on  p.  339. 

2  Tour,  ii.  19  (ed.  1769). 

8  This  is  pointed  out  by  Toynbee,  2nd.  Rev.,  p.  48.  4  /&.,  p.  48. 

8  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  x.  (Vol.  I.  127,  Clarendon  Press  edn.). 

6  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  49.  7  Ib. ,  p.  60. 

8  "  Woollen  cloths,  kerseymeres,  blankets,  etc.,  formed  [in  Wiltshire]  for 
a  long  period  a  principal  manufacture.  From  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  to 
the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  towns  of  Wiltshire  lying  in  the 
valley  of  the  Avon,  on  the  north-west,  and  in  that  of  the  Wily  in  the  south- 
west, Malmesbury,  Chippenham,  Bradford,  Trowbridge,  Westbury,  War- 
minster,  Heytesbury,  and  Wilton,  with  all  the  circumjacent  villages,  were 
largely  employed  in  the  weaving  of  various  kinds  of  woollen  fabrics,  and 
the  clothiers  were  men  of  wealth  and  position.  This  manufacture  declined 
in  Wiltshire  very  rapidly  owing  to  the  general  adoption  of  machinery  and 
the  power-loom  in  the  great  factories  of  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire,  and  to 
the  increasing  consumption,  throughout  England  and  the  Continent,  of 
cotton  and  linen  textures.  John  Aubrey  held  that  the  clothiers  suffered 
in  his  day,  because  '  men  would  take  to  silk  and  Indian  ware.' "  Daniell, 
History  of  Warminster  (1879),  p.  130. 


352  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

turing  processes.  For  the  use  of  steam  power  in  mills 
necessitated  the  liberal  use  of  coal,  and  hence  the  factory 
districts  are  necessarily  almost  coincident  with  the  great 
coalfields,  as  will  be  seen  from  any  geological  map.  It  is 
also  curious  to  notice  that  each  coalfield  has  its  own  par- 
ticular manufacture  closely  associated  with  it.1  Thus  the 
Yorkshire  coalfield  contains  most  of  the  towns  where  the 
woollen  industry  prevails,  while  its  southern  extension,  which 
descends  into  Nottinghamshire,  includes  the  cutlery  and 
hardware  district  of  Sheffield  and  the  lace  and  hosiery  of 
Nottingham.  The  Lancashire  coalfield  is  almost  exclusively 
surrounded  by  towns  engaged  in  the  cotton  trade ;  the 
Staffordshire  fields  are  connected  chiefly  with  pottery,  and, 
on  their  Southern  limit,  with  hardware  and  machinery ;  the 
South  Wales  coal  district  is  noted  for  its  smelting  and  iron- 
works. Moreover,  the  coal  industry  had  been  developed 
almost  simultaneously  with  the  growth  of  manufactures,  and, 
indeed,  one  reacted  upon  the  other.  It  will  be  convenient 
here  to  mention  the  improvements  made  in  coal-mining  and 
in  the  iron  trade. 

§  206.  The  Revolution  in  the  Mining  Industries. 

It  has  been  mentioned  in  a  previous  chapter 2  that  the 
development  of  the  vast  natural  resources  of  our  country  as 
regards  coal  and  iron  was  retarded  by  the  lack  of  steam 
power.  But  with  the  steam-engines  of  Watt  and  Boulton 
a  new  era  dawned  upon  coal-mining.  In  1774  Watt,  after 
vainly  advocating  his  invention,  entered  into  partnership 
with  Matthew  Boulton,  a  Birmingham  man,3  who  devoted 
all  the  capital  he  possessed  to  the  introduction  of  Watt's 
engine  into  practical  use.  The  new  engine  soon  produced 
a  vast  change  in  the  manner  of  pumping  water  from  the 
mines,4  just  as  it  also  produced  other  changes  in  every 

1  This  is  also  noticed  by  H.  R.  Mill,  Commercial  Geography,  pp.  44-46 
(ed.  1888),  and  is,  of  course,  obvious. 
J  Above,  pp.  310  to  312. 

3  See  Smiles,  Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Boulton  and  Watt),  ch.  viii.,  "  Their 
Partnership,"  p.  146. 

4  See  diagram  of  Watt's  pumping-engine  for  mines  in  Smiles,   u.  8., 
ch.  x.  p.  180. 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS     353 

manufacture  dependent  upon  the  use  of  coal.  Steam-power 
was  used  not  only  to  clear  the  mines  of  water,  but  also  in 
sinking  shafts,1  where  formerly  entrance  had  often  been 
made  only  by  tunnelling  in  the  side  of  a  hill.  It  was  used, 
too,  in  bringing  up  the  coal  from  the  pit,  and  in  many 
other  necessary  processes.  The  result  of  this  application  of 
steam  power  was  soon  seen  in  the  general  opening  up  of  all 
the  English  coal-fields,  and  the  consequent  further  growth 
of  towns  like  Newcastle,  Sheffield,  and  Birmingham,2  whose 
industries  now  depend  so  greatly  upon  a  large  supply  of 
coal. 

With  the  great  output  of  coal  came  an  immediate  revival 
of  the  iron  trade,  which  it  will  be  remembered  had  greatly 
declined3  about  1737  and  1740,  for  as  coal  was  not  avail- 
able wood  had  to  be  used  as  fuel,  and  the  consequent 
destruction  of  forests,  especially  the  Sussex  Wealden,  had 
caused  legislative  prohibitions.4  The  scientific  treatment  of 
iron  ore  in  the  various  processes  of  manufacture  had  indeed 
been  improved,  but  nothing  much  could  be  done  without 
coal.  This  was  seen,  for  instance,  by  an  iron-master, 
Anthony  Bacon,  in  1755,  who  obtained  a  lease,  at  the 
trifling  rental  of  £200  per  annum,  for  ninety-nine  years,  of  a 
district  at  Merthyr  Tydvil,  eight  miles  long  and  five  broad, 
upon  which  he  erected  both  iron  and  coal  works.5  In  1760 
Smeaton's  invention6  of  a  new  blowing  apparatus  at  Dr 
Roebuck's  works  at  Carron,  near  Falkirk,  did  away  with 
the  old  clumsy  bellows  ;  and  the  other  inventions  of  the 
Cranages7  (1766),  of  Onions8  (1783),  and  of  Henry  Cort9 
(1784),  for  which  separate  treatises  must  be  consulted, 
brought  the  manufacture  of  iron  almost  to  perfection. 
Whereas  about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  we 
produced  only  some  18,000  tons  of  iron  annually,10  and  had 

1  Bourne,  Romance  of  Trade,  p.  175. 

a  Both  Sheffield  and  Birmingham  only  had  between  20,000  and  30,000 
inhabitants  about  1760  ;  see  Toynbee's  table,  Industrial  devolution,  p.  36  ; 
cf.  also  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vi.  212. 

8  Smiles,  Industrial  Biography,  ch.  ii.  p.  42.         *  Ib.oh.  ii.  pp.  38-42. 
•  Ib.,  ch.  vii.  p.  130.  •  Ib.,  ch.  viii.  p.  137. 
7  Ib.,  ch.  v.  pp.  86-88.                                             8  Ib.,  ch.  vii.  p.  115. 

9  Ib.,  ch.  vii.  (all).  u  Ib.,  ch.  v.  p.  79. 

Z 


354  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

to  import  at  least  20,000  tons,1  we  produced  in  1788  as 
much  as  68,000  tons,2  and  the  production  has  gone  on 
steadily  increasing  to  the  present  time,  when  some  five 
million  tons  of  iron  are  obtained  annually.3 

§  207.   The  Improvements  in  Communications. 

Besides  these  improvements  in  mining  and  machinery, 
there  were  also  others  which,  though  not  perhaps  quite  so 
strikingly  important,  had  a  considerable  influence  upon  the 
progress  of  industry  and  commerce.  These  were  the 
improvements  made  in  the  internal  communications  of  the 
country  both  by  land  and  water.  It  must  not  be  supposed, 
however,  that  because  improvements  were  made  the  state  of 
the  roads  was  so  exceedingly  bad  as  it  has  been  the  fashion 
to  describe  them.  There  has  been  considerable  exaggera- 
tion as  to  the  difficulties  of  travelling  both  in  mediaeval  and 
later  times,  and  there  is  plenty  of  evidence  4  which  goes  to 
show  that  matters  were  not  invariably  so  bad  as  might  be 
imagined  from  descriptions 5  more  picturesque  than  accurate. 
It  is  certain  that  the  cost  of  carriage  in  mediaeval  times  was 
cheap,  and  thus,  by  implication,  that  the  roads  were  good. 
But  less  care  seems  to  have  been  shown  in  maintaining  them 
in  later  centuries,  so  that  it  is  quite  possible  that  the  roads 
in  England  were  in  better  repair  in  the  reign  of  Edward  III. 
than  in  that  of  George  III.6  Still,  even  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  evidence  of  Arthur  Young7 — which  has  been 
freely  misquoted — goes  to  show  that  the  state  of  the  roads 
was  not  by  any  means  so  bad  as  we  should  imagine  if  we 
merely  took  our  picture  of  them  from  the  complaints  made 
of  particularly  execrable  sections.  The  turnpike  roads  were 

1  Scrivener,  History  of  the  Iron  Trade,  pp.  57,  71  ;  Smiles,  u.  s.,  p.  79, 
says  four-fifths  of  it  came  from  Sweden. 

-  M'Culloch's,  Commercial  Dictionary,  s.  v.  Iron. 

3  Year  Boole  of  Commerce. 

4  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.   135 ;  Economic  Interpretation  of  History, 
p.  483. 

5  E.g.  in  Macaulay,  History,  ch.  iii.,  which  has  been  so  freely  copied  by 
his  inferiors. 

6  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  484. 

7  Cf.  itinerary  at  end  of  Northern  Tour,  Vol.  IV. 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS     355 

generally  in  fairly  good  repair,  and  it  is  obvious  that  matters 
cannot  have  been  so  bad  as  is  supposed,  when  we  consider 
that  in  Defoe's  time  Manchester  merchants  would  send  their 
goods  on  horses  right  across  England  to  Stourbridge,1  or 
when  waggons  took  silk  from  London  to  Kendal,2  or  when 
live  geese  were  sent  to  London  markets  in  cartloads  from 
the  Fens.3 

While,  however,  guarding  against  receiving  an  exaggerated 
impression  of  the  evil  state  of  roads  before  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  we  may  notice  that  about  the  middle  of 
that  period  there  were  great  improvements  made,  insomuch 
that  Henry  Homer,  writing  in  1767,  declares  (though 
evidently  with  rhetorical  exaggeration)  "there  never  was  a 
more  astonishing  Revolution  accomplished  in  the  internal 
system  of  any  country  than  has  been  within  the  compass  of 
a  few  years  in  England."  *  This  was  due  to  the  erection  of 
turnpikes  and  levying  of  tolls  under  the  authority  of  various 
Acts  of  Parliament ; 6  and  later  on  there  was  great  develop- 
ment owing  to  the  improved  methods  introduced  by  the 
well-known  road-makers,  Metcalfe,  Telford,  and  Macadam.6 

There  were  also  considerable  improvements  made  in 
carriage  by  water.  This  had  been  a  favourite  mode  of 
conveyance  in  mediaeval  times,  when  the  rivers  were  largely 
used,7  and  it  continued  to  be  so  till,  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, rivers  were  supplemented  or  joined  by  canals.  A 
great  impetus  to  canal-making  was  given  by  the  success  of 
Brindley's  efforts  in  1758,  when  he  made  a  canal  for  the 
Duke  of  Bridgewater's  colliery  at  Worsley  to  Manchester.8 
The  importance  of  this  canal  was  not  due  to  its  length,  for 
it  was  only  seven  miles  long,  but  to  the  fact  that  its  con- 
struction presented  serious  engineering  difficulties,  such  as 
tunnelling  through  rock  and  carrying  an  aqueduct  over  the 

1  Defoe,  Tour,  i.  94.         2  Young,  Northern  Tour,  iii.  171-173  (ed.  1770). 

3  Defoe,  Tour,  i.  54. 

4  Homer,  The  Enquiry  into  the  Means  of  Preserving  the  Publick  Roads  ; 
cf.  p.  4  seq. 

8  1  Geo  II.,  c.  11 ;  5  Geo.  I.,  c.  12 ;  14  Geo.  II.,  c.  42.     Cf.  also  Smiles, 
Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Metcalfe  and  Telford),  Vol.  III.  p.  69. 

6  Ib. ,  passim. 

7  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  i.  p.  663 ;  also  i.  ch.  27,  and  v   ch.  25. 

8  Smiles,  Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Vol.  I.,  Brinrlley),  ch.  iii. 


356  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

River  Irwell.1  Other  canals  followed.  One  of  ninety-sir 
miles  in  length,  connecting  the  rivers  Trent  and  Merseyr 
was  finished  in  1777  ;  Hull  and  Liverpool  were  connected  by 
another,  and  Liverpool  with  Bristol ;  and  in  1792  the  Grand 
Junction  Canal  connected  London  with  Oxford  and  other 
important  towns  in  the  Midlands.2  It  is  curious  to  notice 
that  on  at  least  one  of  these  early  canals,  that  made  from 
Worsley  to  Manchester,  passengers  were  conveyed  as  well  as 
goods.  "  A  branch  of  useful  and  profitable  carriage,  hitherto 
scarcely  known  in  England,  was  also  undertaken,  which  was 
that  of  passengers.  Boats  on  the  model  of  the  Dutch  trek- 
schuyts,  but  more  agreeable  and  capacious,  were  set  up, 
which,  at  very  reasonable  rates  and  with  great  convenience, 
carried  numbers  of  persons  daily  to  and  from  Manchester 
along  the  line  of  the  canal."3  This  branch  of  traffic  has 
quite  died  out,  and  even  the  carriage  of  goods  by  water 
is  now  not  so  frequent  as  formerly.  But  it  is  a  matter  of 
regret  that  waterways  are  not  more  used  for  merchandise  in 
England,  as  they  are  in  some  Continental  countries,  even 
where  railways  are  numerous ;  for  in  Belgium,*  which  has 
quite  as  many  railways  in  proportion  to  its  size  as  England, 
both  canals  and  rivers  are  very  widely  used  for  the  transit 
of  goods,  and  prove  of  great  utility. 

§  208.   The  Nation's  Wealth  and  its  Wars. 

Of  course  all  these  discoveries  of  new  processes  in  procur- 
ing coal  and  making  iron,  and  the  improvements  in  com- 
munication, enormously  increased  the  wealth  of  England, 
and  at  the  same  time  entirely  changed  the  conditions  of 
industry.  For  they  helped  the  textile  manufactures  by 
providing  any  amount  of  fuel  and  machinery,  and  all  these 
together  gave  employment  to  a  population  that  seemed  to 
grow  in  accordance  with  the  need  of  the  nation  for  workers.5 

1  Smiles,  Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Vol.  I.,  Brincttey),  oh.  iii.  p.  173. 

3  For  a  very  good  summary  of  the  Canals  of  England  and  other  countries, 
cf.  M'Culloch  s  Commercial  Dictionary  (ed.  1844),  s.  v.  Canals. 

*  Aikin,  Description  of  the  Country  round  Manchester,  p.  116. 

4  This  is  from  the  writer's  personal  observation. 

5  "In  the  cotton  trade,"  said  Sir  R.  Peel  in  1806,  "machinery  has  given 
birth  to  a  new  population,"  and  he  ascribed  this  to  early  marriages,  caused 


EPOCH  OF  THE  GREAT  INVENTIONS      357 

The  new  textile  and  mining  industries  supplied  England 
with  that  vast  wealth l  which  enabled  her  to  endure  success- 
fully the  long  years  of  war  at  the  close  of  last  century  and 
the  beginning  of  this.  The  Industrial  Revolution  came 
only  just  in  time,  for  after  the  repose  of  1703  to  1792, 
during  which  this  silent  Revolution  matured  and  took  root, 
England  engaged  in  a  struggle  which  she  certainly  could 
never  have  supported  without  a  far  greater  national  wealth 
than  she  possessed  in  the  first  three  quarters  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century.  Even  as  it  was,  the  year  1815  found  a 
large  portion  of  her  people  in  poverty  and  distress,2  while  the 
industrial  classes  suffered  heavily  from  the  taxation  which 
the  war  imposed.8  But  owing  to  her  industrial  develop- 
ment, the  war  left  England  at  its  close,  in  spite  of  all  her 
troubles,  the  foremost  nation  of  Europe  in  economic  develop- 
ment, and  consequently  first  in  other  matters  also.  As  is 
the  case  with  most  modern  contests,  this  great  war  originated 
in  economic  causes,  even  to  a  certain  extent  in  economic 
mistakes,  but  it  had  important  effects  upon  industry,  and 
was  largely  affected  by  industrial  considerations.  Hence  we 
must  consider  it  rather  more  closely. 

by  high  rate  of  wages  and  comfort.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  88, 
note. 

1  Lecky,  History  of  the.  Eighteenth  Century,  vi.  218.     This  is  now  per- 
ceived by  most  historians,  but  at  one  time  it  was  ignored.     But  it  is  now 
recognised  that  at  the  time  of  the  Continental  War  "  Pitt's  main  support 
lay  in  the  extraordinary  financial  resources  supplied  by  the  rapidly  increas- 
ing manufactures  of  England."    S.  R.  Gardiner,  Students'  History  of  Eng- 
land, p.  S35. 

2  This  was  the  time  when  the  Poor  Rate  was  rising  year  after  year,  till  in 
1818  it  was  over  13s.  per  head  ;  see  below,  p.  422. 

3  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  605. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

WAR,    POLITICS,    AND    INDUSTRY 

§  209.   England's  Industrial  Advantages  in  1763. 

IF  we  look  at  the  state  of  the  European  Powers  after  the 
conclusion  of  the  Seven  Years'  War  by  the  Treaty  of  Paris 
in  1763,  we  shall  see  that  England  had  achieved  a  very 
favourable  position  for  the  growth  of  her  internal  industries.1 
It  is  true  that  together  with  the  rest  of  Europe  she  had 
adopted  the  policy  of  endeavouring  to  secure  a  sole  market 2 
for  her  goods,  but  though  that  policy  was  a  mistake,  in  so 
far  as  it  aimed  at  a  monopoly,  England  was  not  alone  in 
her  error,  and  since  other  Powers  were  doing  the  same,  it 
was  just  as  well  that  she  should  hold  the  lead  among  them. 
Moreover,  since  we  are  now  paying  interest  upon  the  heavy 
national  bills  which  we  ran  up  at  that  time,  we  may  profit- 
ably examine  what  we  gained  thereby. 

In  the  first  place,  England  had  seriously  crippled  her 
powerful  commercial  rival,  France,  both  in  her  Indian  and 
American  possessions.  The  French  flag  had  nearly  dis- 
appeared from  the  sea.3  By  the  Seven  Years'  War  we  had 
gained  Canada,  Florida,  and  all  the  French  possessions 
east  of  the  Mississippi  Eiver  (except  New  Orleans) ;  while 
in  India  our  influence  had  become  supreme,  owing  to  the 
victories  of  Clive.  French  influence  in  India  and  America 
was  practically  annihilated.  Spain,  the  faithful  ally  of 
France,  lost  with  her  friend  her  place  as  the  commercial 
rival  of  England  in  foreign  trade.  Germany  was  again 
being  ravaged  by  the  dynastic  struggles,  in  which  Frederick 

1  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,  pp.  290-291,  gives  an  ad- 
mirable summary  of  the  state  of  European  powers  at  this  time.     Of.  also 
Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  iii.  p.  23,  as  to  the  ascendancy 
of  England  at  this  time. 

2  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  323. 

3  Lecky,  History,  iii.  p.  23. 

353 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND  INDUSTRY        359 

the  Great  bore  so  prominent  a  part,  between  the  reigning 
houses  of  Austria  and  Prussia.  Holland  was  similarly  torn 
by  internal  dissensions  under  the  Stadtholder  William  V., 
which  gave  the  rival  sovereigns  of  Prussia  and  Austria  a 
chance  of  making  matters  worse  by  their  interference.  By 
1790  the  United  Provinces  had  thus  sunk  into  utter  insig- 
nificance. Sweden,  Norway,  and  Italy  were  of  no  account 
in  European  politics,  and  Russia  had  only  begun  to  come 
to  the  front.  Hence  England  alone  had  the  chance  of 
"  the  universal  empire  of  a  sole  market."  l  The  supply  of 
this  market,  especially  in  our  American  colonies,  was  in 
the  hands  of  English  manufacturers  and  English  workmen. 
The  great  inventions  which  came,  as  we  saw,  after  1763 
were  thus  at  once  called  into  active  employment,  and  our 
mills  and  mines  were  able  to  produce  wealth  as  fast  as  they 
could  work,  without  fear  of  foreign  competition. 

§  210.  The  Mercantile  Theory. 

But  in  some  points  our  statesmen  and  merchants  made  a 
mistake  in  their  policy.  The  commercial  mind  of  England 
at  this  epoch  was  dominated  by  what  is  known  as  the 
Mercantile  Theory.2  It  was  a  theory  that  had  grown 
up  naturally  out  of  the  spirit  of  Nationalism,  of  self- 
sustained  and  complete  national  life,  that  was  our  heritage 
from  the  Renaissance  and  the  Reformation.3  It  was  not 
altogether  wrong,  for  its  object  was  national  greatness,  an 
object  laudable  and  harmless  enough  ;  but  the  believers  in 
the  policy  of  increasing  our  national  greatness  also  believed 
that  it  could  only  be  attained  in  one  way,  and  that  was 
at  the  expense  of  our  neighbours.  It  was  not  sufficiently 
understood  that  commerce,  if  properly  carried  on,  is  pro- 
ductive of  benefit  to  both  the  trading  parties  ;  and  that 
though  one  side  may  seem  to  gain  an  advantage,  there 
must  be  also  an  advantage  to  the  other  side,  since  other- 

1  Rogers,  Economic  Interjn-etation,  p.  291. 

2  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  ch.  vii.  p.  72  (on  The,  Mercantile 
Theory) ;    Cunningham,    Growth    of  English    Industry,    ii.    pp.    16  »</»/. 
Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,  p.  323  ;  also  Adam  Smith, 
Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.  chs.  i.-viii. 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  76. 


360  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

wise  no  one  would  be  willing  to  trade.  The  advantages 
gained  by  the  two  parties  to  a  bargain  are  not  always  iden- 
tical or  even  necessarily  similar,  but  advantage  of  some  kind 
must  exist,  for  it  is  the  essence  of  a  bargain  that  each  of 
the  contracting  parties  should  benefit  by  it.  The  benefit 
gained  by  one  party  may  seem  to  the  other  insignificant  or 
even  illusory,  and  doubtless  it  often  is  ;  but  unless  that 
second  party  imagined  that  he  was  obtaining  something  at 
least  equivalent  to  what  he  gave  to  the  first,  he  would  hardly 
conclude  the  exchange.  A  Hudson's  Bay  fur-trader  is  no 
doubt  amused  at  the  folly  of  the  Indian  hunter  who  barters 
a  valuable  skin  for  a  few  drops  of  inferior  brandy ;  but 
so  long  as  the  Indian  considers  the  doubtful  joys  of  fire- 
water superior  to  the  solid  merits  of  the  fur  of  the  sable, 
the  bargain  is  to  both  commercially  profitable.  But  as 
long  as  the  principles  of  barter,  which  underlie  even  the 
most  complicated  transactions  of  international  commerce, 
were  imperfectly  understood,  as  indeed  they  still  frequently 
are,  it  seemed  to  English  legislators  and  merchants  that 
foreign  commerce  must  result  in  a  loss  to  one  side  or  the 
other,  unless  it  was  very  carefully  regulated ;  and,  fearing 
lest  the  loss  should  fall  upon  them,  they  naturally  took  what 
seemed  the  best  method  to  avoid  it. 

Nowhere,  perhaps,  is  this  seen  more  clearly  than  in  the 
excessive  care  that  was  taken  to  prevent  England  from 
losing  on  the  balance  of  trade  by  letting  gold  and  silver  go 
out  of  the  country  in  exchange  for  foreign  commodities. 
The  use  of  the  precious  metals  in  commerce  has  at  all 
times  been  imperfectly  understood  by  very  many  of  those 
who  employ  them,  and  by  not  a  few  of  those  who  under- 
take to  write  about  them.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  to 
find  that  politicians  and  traders  from  the  sixteenth  to  the 
eighteenth  century  believed  that  the  country  was  suffering 
a  severe  loss  when  it  allowed  too  much  bullion  to  be 
exported  in  payment  for  foreign  goods.  This  loss  seemed 
to  occur  when  the  value  of  our  exports  did  not  more  or 
less  exactly  balance  the  value  of  the  imports  ;  and  when  it 
did  not,  the  difference  which  England  paid  to  the  foreigner 
in  coin  or  bullion  was  said  to  be  a  national  loss,  and  the 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND   INDUSTRY        361 

"  balance  of  trade,"  as  it  was  called,  was  said  to  be  against 
us.  This  was  thought  to  be  especially  the  case  in  the 
trade  with  East  India,  since  large  quantities  of  bullion 
were  exported  to  buy  the  Indian  commodities  which  were 
brought  back  to  England.  Only  the  more  thoughtful 
writers  of  the  seventeenth  century  perceived  that  the 
bullion  exported  to  India  was,  so  to  speak,  a  seed  which 
ultimately  brought  back  a  rich  harvest  in  coin  by  our  sale 
of  spices  and  other  Eastern  commodities  in  the  European 
market.1  But  the  average  politician  thought  that,  in  order 
to  secure  and  retain  wealth,  it  was  necessary  that  on  every 
article  exported  a  balance  in  coin  should  eventually  be  paid 
to  the  English  dealer ;  and  hence  came  those  frequent 
legislative  prohibitions  of  the  export  of  bullion  which  con- 
tinued, at  least  in  form,  till  1816.2 

§  211.  The  Mercantile  Theory  in  Practice. 

This  is,  however,  only  one  example  of  the  results  of  a 
theory  which  maintained  that  regulation  was  a  vital  neces- 
sity for  commerce.  The  whole  of  English  industry  and 
commerce  was  permeated  by  the  influence  of  this  theory. 
Regulation  was  its  keynote  ;  but  it  was  regulation  with  a 
definite  and  avowed  object.  That  object  was,  as  hinted 
above,  not  only  mercantile  profit  but  political  power  ;  and 
to  political  power  the  necessities  of  industry  were  to  be 
strictly  subordinate.  Even  in  the  case  just  quoted  of  the 
export  of  bullion,  there  were  two  motives  at  work  in  men's 
minds :  the  commercial  desire  to  obtain  a  visible  profit  in 
money,  and  the  political  desire  to  keep  in  the  country  an 
accumulation  of  treasure,  which  might  be  useful  in  case  of 
war.3  Of  these  two  motives  the  political  was  frequently 

1  For  this  trade  see  Mun's  valuable  Discourse,  of  Trade  from  England 
unto  the  East  Indies,  in  Purchas's  Pilgrims  (1625)  ;  also  Misselden,  Circle 
of  Commerce  (1623),  p.  34;  Malynes,  Center  of  the  Circle  (1623),  p.  114; 
Craik,  British  Commerce,  ii.  109,   172-179  ;  also  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of 
Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  v.,  and  Bk.  IV.  ch.  i.  (Vol.  I.  p.  46  and  II.  12,  Claren- 
don Press  edn. ). 

2  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  187. 

1  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.  ch.  i.  (Vol.  II.  p.  13,  ed. 
cit. ),  shows  that  even  in  case  of  war  the  accumulation  of  treasure  is  un- 
necessary 


362  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  stronger,  and  to  this  we  can  trace  the  whole  elaborate 
series  of  regulations  which  were  imposed  upon  English 
industry  and  commerce  from  the  days  of  Richard  II.1  to  the 
beginning  of  the  reign  of  Victoria.  The  mercantile  system, 
thus  regarded,  presents  a  clear  and  interesting  outline.2 
National  power  depended,  or  seemed  to  politicians  to 
depend,  mainly  on  three  things — (1)  The  accumulation  of 
treasure  as  a  fund  in  case  of  emergencies  ;  (2)  the  develop- 
ment of  shipping  as  a  nursery  for  the  navy  ;  and  (3)  the 
maintenance  of  an  effective  population  both  for  commercial 
and  military  purposes.  To  the  first  requirement  we  trace 
the  legislative  interference  with  the  precious  metals  already 
alluded  to ;  to  the  second  we  can  trace  many  statutes  regu- 
lating the  shipping  trade,  and  more  especially  the  famous 
Navigation  Acts3  of  1651,  about  which  there  has  been  so 
keen  a  controversy  ;  and  to  the  third  we  may  trace,  though 
less  distinctly,  the  attempts  of  various  governments  to 
regulate  the  agricultural  industry  of  the  country,  either 
by  encouraging  tillage  at  the  expense  of  pasturage,  or  by 
imposing  protective  duties  upon  a  foreign  food  supply. 
This  legislative  support  of  agriculture  has  been  attributed  4 
to  the  desire  of  governments  to  favour  that  "  kind  of 
employment  which  was  most  favourable  for  the  mainten- 
ance of  a  vigorous  and  healthy  race,  and  the  best  material 
for  forming  a  military  force."  This  may  have  been  the 
case  in  the  days  when  the  English  yeoman  formed  so 
important  a  feature  in  the  armies  of  Henry  V.  ;  but  when 
the  success  of  agriculture  was  so  patently  important  to  the 
income  of  the  landowners,  who  for  centuries  formed  the 
majority  of  the  English  Parliament,  it  is  hard  to  believe 
that  such  legislation  was  not  occasionally  actuated  by 
motives  of  obvious  self-interest.  It  is  again  little  less 
than  absurd  to  regard  the  Corn  Laws  as  being  passed  in 
order  to  "  provide  suitable  conditions  for  the  constant 
supply  of  food," 5  when  they  not  only  notoriously  failed 
in  that  object,  but  even  prevented  its  possible  accomplish- 

1  Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  350. 

2  Ib.,  i.  426,  ii.  16.  3  Above,  p  287. 
4  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  i.  427. 

6  Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  17. 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND   INDUSTRY        363 

ment.  It  is  quite  possible  that  those  who  enacted  them 
sincerely  believed  that  the  maintenance  of  a  landed  aris- 
tocracy was  necessary  to  the  well-being  of  the  State,  and 
that  rents  must  at  all  costs  be  kept  up  ;  but  there  are  few 
mortals  who  are  not  equally  convinced  of  the  necessity  of 
their  own  existence,  and  fewer  still  who  would  not  joyfully 
support  a  series  of  measures  which  appear  to  be  beneficial 
simultaneously  to  the  public  welfare  and  their  private  purse. 

The  Mercantile  System,  in  fact,  presents  a  strange  mix- 
ture of  political  expediency  and  personal  gain.  Combined 
with  a  sincere  desire  for  national  progress,  there  is  the  irre- 
pressible prompting  of  class  interests.  The  landowners 
wanted  Protection  for  agriculture,  and  the  manufacturers 
wan  ted  Protection  for  their  home  industries;  and  hence  we  find 
that  while  the  former  acquiesced  in  the  prohibition  of  the 
export  of  wool  for  the  sake  of  the  manufacturing  interest, 
the  latter  had  no  objection  to  the  existence  of  a  bounty  on 
the  export  of  corn.1  Politics,  which  are  at  all  times  beset 
by  the  least  noble  of  human  passions,  were  complicated  and 
degraded  by  the  intermixture  of  commercial  interests,2  and 
the  decline  of  the  mercantile  system  was  due  almost  as 
much  to  the  conflicting  motives  which  it  could  not  help 
bringing  into  play  as  to  the  inherent  weakness  of  a  scheme 
which  attempted  to  regulate  a  commercial  and  industrial 
community  which  had  long  outgrown  mediaeval  restrictions. 

The  scheme  of  regulation,  which  was  a  necessary  part  of 
the  mercantile  system,  is  seen  in  every  department  of  indus- 
try as  well  as  of  commerce,  though  it  was  applied  much 
more  thoroughly  to  external  than  to  internal  trade.3  But 
it  has  been  well  remarked  that,  in  an  age  when  it  was 
deemed  the  duty  of  the  State  to  watch  over  the  individual 
citizen  in  all  his  relations,  and  to  provide  not  only  for  his 
protection  from  force  and  fraud,  but  even  to  assure  his 
spiritual  welfare,  it  was  after  all  only  natural  that  the  State 
should  attempt  to  fix  a  legal  rate  of  wages  just  as  it  fixed  a 
legal  rate  of  interest,  and  that  it  should  try  to  supervise  the 
production  of  commodities  so  as  to  ensure  to  its  citizens  the 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  79.  8  lb.,  p.  80. 

•  Ib.,  p.  75. 


364  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

manufacture  of  honest  wares.1  Hence  there  grew  up  natur- 
ally those  restrictions  upon  industry  which  are  embodied  in 
the  Acts  of  Apprenticeship  and  the  Assessment  of  Wages. 
The  former  was  supposed  to  prevent  undue  competition  in  a 
trade  and  to  provide  a  suitable  number  of  skilled  workmen 
capable  of  turning  out  honest  work,2  while  the  latter  was  to 
fix  a  fair  price  for  a  man's  labour  and  to  secure  a  regularity 
of  wages  that  would  be  beneficial  to  master  and  man  alike.3 
But  the  growth  of  industry  and  the  inevitable  tendencies  of 
human  nature  rendered  the  first  of  these  enactments  futile 
land  the  second  injurious,  so  that  the  great  economist,  who 
surveyed  the  system  as  it  existed  at  the  close  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  could  only  regard  the  apprenticeship  and 
guild  laws  as  causing  an  obstruction  to  the  freedom  of 
labour,4  and  the  regulation  of  wages  as  an  oppression  of  the 
poor  by  the  rich.5  The  attempt  of  legislators  to  reconcile 
public  welfare  with  private  interest  proved,  unfortunately, 
unsuccessful. 

§  212.   English  Policy  towards  the  Colonies. 

Nowhere,  however,  were  the  effects  of  the  mercantile 
system  so  strikingly  visible  as  in  the  regulations  which 
were  laid  upon  the  trade  with  our  colonial  possessions  ;  and 
nowhere  do  we  see  more  clearly  the  combination  of  national 
policy  with  class  interests.  The  purpose,  before  referred  to,  of 
gaining  power  and  wealth  for  the  nation  6  seemed  to  English 
legislators  to  require  that  the  colonies  should  be  entirely 
subordinate  to  the  mother  country,  and  that  their  trade  and 
industry  should  be  regulated  so  as  to  increase  at  once  our 
political  power  and  our  commercial  wealth.  Legislators 
who  may  have  had  only  a  desire  to  do  what  seemed  best  for 
the  nation  politically  were  supported  by  merchants  whose 
private  interest  it  was  to  keep  the  colonial  trade  as  far 
as  possible  in  their  own  hands.  Hence  the  trade  of  the 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  73. 

2  Cf.  Adam  Smith's  criticism  in  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.  ch.  x.,  pt.  2 
(Vol.  I.  p.  125,  Clarendon  Press  edn.). 

3  See  on  this  point  Dr  Cunningham's  Growth  of  English  Industry,  ii.  pp. 
42-44.  4  76.,  i.  p.  143. 

5  Ib.,  i.  149  (referring  to  the  effects  of  the  Law  of  Settlement). 

6  Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  153,  154. 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND  INDUSTRY        365 

colonies  was  most  carefully  regulated  in  the  interests  of  the 
mother  country,  though  it  is  only  just  to  observe  that  in  the 
opinion  of  Adam  Smith  the  English  colonies  were  more 
favoured  and  allowed  more  extensive  markets  than  those  of 
any  other  European  nation.1  But  England,  like  all  other 
countries  at  that  date,  thought  that  the  greatest  benefits  of 
Colonial,  or  for  that  matter  of  any  other,  trade  could  only 
be  obtained  by  securing  to  itself  a  monopoly  2  or  sole  market. 
"  The  colonies  were  regarded  merely  as  markets  and  farms 
of  the  mother  country,"  3  and  Adam  Smith  was  so  disgusted 
at  the  theory  of  colonial  possessions  adopted  by  English 
statesmen  and  merchants,  that  he  remarked  bitterly  that 
"  to  found  a  great  empire  for  the  sole  purpose  of  raising  up 
a  people  of  customers  may  at  first  sight  appear  a  project  fit 
only  for  a  nation  of  shopkeepers."  *  "  The  maintenance  of 
this  monopoly,"  he  adds,  "  has  hitherto  been  the  principal, 
or  more  properly,  perhaps,  the  sole  end  and  purpose  of  the 
dominion  which  Great  Britain  assumes  over  her  colonies."  5 
It  has,  in  fact,  been  said  that  the  establishment  of  our 
American  and  West  Indian  colonies  was  merely  a  device  of 
the  supporters  of  the  Mercantile  System,  who  founded  them 
with  the  design  of  raising  up  a  population  chiefly  agricul- 
tural in  character,  whose  commerce  should  be  confined 
entirely  to  an  exchange  of  their  raw  products  for  our  manu- 
factured goods.6  This,  however,  is  not  entirely  true. 
There  is  not  the  least  doubt  that  at  first  the  colonists  were 
allowed  to  carry  on  a  direct  intercourse  with  foreign  states, 
and,  in  fact,  their  charters  empowered  them  to  do  so.  The 
Virginian  settlers,  for  example,  established  tobacco  ware- 
houses in  Middleburgh  and  Flushing  in  1620,  as  depots 
for  their  trade  with  the  Continent.7  It  was  not  till  the 
time  of  the  Navigation  Acts  (1651  and  1660)  that  the 
import  and  export  trade  of  the  colonies  was  actually  mono- 

1  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.,  ch.  vii.  (Vol.  II.  165). 
1  Cf.  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  pp.  323,  325,  330. 
8  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  81. 

4  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.  ch.  vii.  (Vol.  II.  196).       8  76.,  Vol.  II.  197. 
8  Cf.  M'Culloch's  Commercial  Dictionary,  8.  v.  Colonies  (ed.  1844).    The 
whole  article  on  "  Colonies"  is  worth  careful  reading. 

7  Robertson's  America,  Book  IX.  p.  104  (in  M'Culloch,  u.  «.). 


366  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

polised  by  their  mother  country.  The  first  of  these  Acts, 
as  we  know,  enacted  that  the  trade  of  the  colonists  should 
be  carried  on  exclusively  in  British  or  colonial  ships,  but 
the  second  Act1  went  much  further  than  this,  for  it  enacted 
that  certain  specified  articles — in  fact,  the  chief  products  of 
the  colonies — should  not  be  exported  directly  from  the 
colonies  to  any  foreign  country,  but  must  be  first  sent  to 
Britain,  and  there,  in  the  words  of  the  Act,  "  unladen,  and 
laid  upon  the  shore,"  before  they  could  be  forwarded  to 
their  ultimate  destination,  if  they  were  meant  for  any 
European  market.  These  articles  became  known  by  the 
name  of  "  enumerated  articles,"  and  were  originally  limited 
to  sugar,  molasses,  ginger,  fustic,  tobacco,  cotton,  and 
indigo  :  but  afterwards  coffee,  hides,  iron,  corn,  and  lumber 
were  added.  Moreover,  not  content  with  making  the 
colonists  sell  their  goods  only  in  the  English  markets,  it 
was  enacted  further 2  (in  1663)  that  no  goods  should  be 
imported  into  the  British  colonies  unless  they  were  actually 
first  laden  and  put  on  board  at  some  British  port,  so  that 
all  commercial  intercourse,  both  of  export  and  import  trade, 
had  first  to  go  through  British  hands.  It  is  quite  obvious 
that,  apart  from  any  considerations  of  national  policy,  these 
regulations  were  dictated  by  the  class  interests  of  British 
manufacturers  and  merchants.3  Even  the  statesmen  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  apart  from  the  merchants,  seem  to  have 
thought  that  the  colonies  owed  everything  to  England,  and 
that,  therefore,  it  was  only  fair  that  they  should  be  exploited 
in  the  interests  of  the  mother  country.4  Thus  all  imports 
to  our  colonies  from  any  other  country  of  Europe  except 
England  were  forbidden,  in  order  that  our  manufacturers 
might  monopolise  the  American  market.5  The  mercantile 
policy  of  our  legislators  went  even  further  than  this,  for 
every  attempt  was  made  to  discourage  the  colonists  from 

1  The  12  Charles  II.,  c.  18. 

2  M'Culloch,  Commercial  Dictionary,  u.  s.,  p.  318. 

3  The  Bristol  merchants  in  especial  benefited  from  these  regulations. 
Hence  they  talked  most  glibly  about  benefiting  the  mother  country  ;  cf. 
the  pamphlet  called  An  Essay  on  the.  State  of  England  (1697),  p.  71,  by 
Gary,  of  Bristol. 

4  Toynbce,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  81.  5  Ib. 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND   INDUSTRY        367 

starting  manufactures  at  home.  The  American  woollen 
industry  was  interfered  with,  and  the  export  of  woollen 
manufactures  from  one  colony  to  another  forbidden  ; l  all 
iron  manufactures2  were  suppressed  in  1750  ;  even  colonial 
hatters  were  not  allowed  to  send  hats  from  one  colony  into 
another.3  In  fact,  so  far  was  this  principle  carried,  that 
Lord  Chatham  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  in  Parliament 
that  "  the  British  colonists  of  North  America  had  no  right 
to  manufacture  even  a  nail  for  a  horse-shoe." 4  With 
aggravating  restrictions  of  this  character,  it  was  almost 
certain  that  sooner  or  later  ill-feeling  would  arise  among 
the  colonists  ;  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  long  before  the  War 
of  Independence,  this  ill-feeling  was  gaining  ground ;  so 
that  the  special  circumstances  which  led  to  the  war  were  only 
the  secondary  causes  of  a  movement  which  was,  from  the 
nature  of  the  case,  inevitable. 

§  213.  Attempts  to  raise  a  Revenue  from  America. 
Had  it  not  been  for  the  ill-feeling  thus  caused,  cir- 
cumstances had  become,  after  the  defeat  of  France  in  the 
Seven  Years'  War,  very  favourable  for  the  building  up  in 
America  of  a  colonial  empire  as  rich  as  that  of  India,  but 
whose  population,  unlike  that  of  the  East,  should  consist 
almost  entirely  of  English  settlers.  This  pleasant  vision, 
however,  was  never  to  be  realised.  The  time  of  separation 
was  approaching.  It  probably  would  have  come  in  any 
case,  owing  to  the  mistaken  policy  of  the  home  Government 
in  regard  to  colonial  trade,  but  the  immediate  cause  was  the 
attempt  made  to  raise  a  revenue  from  the  colonies  without 
first  gaining  their  assent  thereto,  and  without  allowing  them 
representation  at  home.  The  revenue  was  needed  in  order 
to  pay  for  the  expenses  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  in  which 
conflict  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  colonists  had  received 
substantial  help  from  their  mother  country,  and  had  gained 
substantial  benefits.  Therefore  it  did  not  seem  unfair  that 
they  should  be  asked  to  contribute  towards  lightening  a 

1  Bancroft,  History  of  the  United  States,  ii.  284,  iii.  478,  666. 
2//..,  ii.  521,  iii.  42. 

3  Of.  the  5  G«orge  II.,  c.  22  ;  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  81. 

4  Edwards,  Went  Indies,  Vol.  II.  p.  500. 


368  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

burden  which  had  to  some  extent  been  incurred  on  their 
behalf.  Nor,  indeed,  was  the  request  in  itself  altogether 
unreasonable,  but  the  colonists  resented  the  manner  in 
which  it  was  made,  and  refused  to  assent  to  the  principle  of 
taxation  without  representation.  The  history  of  the  struggle 
that  followed  is  too  well-known  to  need  further  repetition.1 
It  began  with  the  Stamp  Act  of  1765,  which  laid  a  tax 
upon  the  stamps  required  for  legal  purposes.2  This  suc- 
ceeded in  irritating  the  colonists  to  such  an  extent  that  they 
refused  to  have  any  commercial  intercourse  with  the  mother 
country,  and  so  powerful  was  their  opposition  that  it  pro- 
duced a  considerable  decline  in  the  colonial  trade  with  Eng- 
land, and  English  manufacturers  themselves  requested  that 
the  Act  might  be  repealed.3  This  was  done  in  1776,  but 
the  next  year  the  "  six  duties  "  were  imposed  4  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  "  expedient  that  a  revenue  should  be  raised  in 
His  Majesty's  dominions  in  America."  But  the  opposition 
of  the  colonists  was  so  great  that  it  was  found  impossible  to 
collect  the  duties,  and  they  were  therefore  all  repealed 
except  that  on  tea,  though  a  preamble  to  the  Act  regarding 
the  tea  duty  still  asserted  the  right  of  the  home  Govern- 
ment to  tax  its  colonies.6 

§  214.  Outbreak  of  Wcvr. 

Then  came  the  refusal  of  the  citizens  of  Boston  to  pay 
even  this  tax,  and  their  well-known  feat  of  throwing  a  cargo 
of  tea6  from  the  ship  that  brought  it  into  their  harbour 
(1773).  Lord  North,  the  chief  minister  of  George  III.  at 
that  time,  tried  to  punish  the  Bostonians  by  declaring  their 
port  closed,  and  by  annulling  the  charter  of  Massachussets, 
their  colony.7  Thus  matters  went  from  bad  to  worse,  until, 
in  1775,  all  trade  with  the  colonies  was  forbidden,  and  the 

1  Cf>  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  Vol.  III.  ch.  xii.,  IV. 
ch.  xiv.  and  xv. ,  and,  of  course,  Bancroft's  History  of  the  United  States 

8  Cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  iii.  28,  and  Lecky,  u.  s. 

3  Craik,  iii.  30,  31. 

*  So  called  because  they  were  imposed  upon  six  articles,  including  glass, 
tea,  paper,  red  and  white  lead,  painters'  colours,  and  pasteboard.  They 
were  estimated  to  produce  about  £40,000,  for  the  purpose  of  paying  colonial 
judges  and  governors.  Craik,  iii.  32  ;  Lecky,  History,  iii.  353. 

8  Lecky,  History,  iii.  365.  6  Ib.,  iii.  387.  7  Ib.,  iii.  397." 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND   INDUSTRY        369 

rupture  with  the  mother  country  was  completed  by  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  on  July  4th,  1776.  England 
tried  to  enforce  obedience  by  military  power,  but  the  royal 
troops  were  stoutly  resisted,  and  though  the  fortunes  of  war 
frequently  varied,  and  the  colonists  were  often  defeated,  the 
result  was  that  they  achieved  their  independence.1  It 
should  be  noted  that  Spain  and  France  took  the  opportunity 
of  paying  off  their  ancient  grudge  against  England  by  help- 
ing her  colonists  against  her,  chiefly  by  means  of  their 
navies.2  And  it  should  also  be  noticed  that,  in  spite  of 
every  difficulty,  England  only  just  failed  to  retain  her  hold 
upon  the  colonies,  and  that  if  the  French  had  not  interfered 
it  is  very  possible  that  the  colonists  would  never  have  suc- 
ceeded in  becoming  independent,  at  any  rate  not  till  many 
years  later  than  they  actually  did.  As  it  was,  however,  we 
lost  the  opportunity  of  founding  a  really  great  colonial 
empire,  and  alienated  the  sympathies  of  a  large  number  of 
our  fellow-countrymen.  Nevertheless,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,3  there  were  great  compensations  for  our  loss.  As  the 
new  nation  prospered,  our  trade  with  it  increased ;  and  as 
American  agriculture  developed,  the  demand  for  our  manu- 
factures in  the  United  States  market  became  greater  also ; 
while  in  the  East  we  were  at  this  time  obtaining  several 
new  markets  hitherto  monopolised  by  Holland.  Certainly, 
from  a  commercial  point  of  view,  the  war  did  our  trade 
very  little  harm,  for  soon  after  it  ended  we  notice  a  con- 
siderable increase  in  the  imports  and  exports  to  and  from 
the  colonies.*  But  yet  no  amount  of  argument  about  com- 
pensation in  trade  and  elsewhere  can  do  away  with  the  fact 

1  Apart  from  Bancroft's  great  History  of  the  United  States,  few  books 
are  more  instructive  upon  the  state  of  feeling  in  England  and  America 
respectively  than  Thackeray's  novel,  The  Virginians. 

3  Cf.  Lecky,  History,  iv.  p.  38.     The  patriotism  of  the  colonies  in  thus 
accepting  foreign  help  after  all  that  England  had  done  for  them  is  an 
instructive  comment  upon   the    supposed    bond   of   sentimental    loyalty 
about  which  some  people  talk  even  now.     But  the  nonsense  of  sentiment 
in  regard  to  our  colonies  is  equalled  by  the  bad  taste  of  colonials,   who 
vapour  about  cutting  themselves  loose  from  the  old  country  ;   cf,  also 
Rogers,  Econ.  Interpretation,  p.  332. 

8  Caldecott,  English  Colonisation  and  Empire,  p.  57. 

4  Cf.  Craik,  Hist.  Brit.  Comm.,  iii.  102. 

2  A 


37° 


INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 


that  England  in  many  ways  has  suffered  a  permanent  loss 
from  the  revolt  of  the  American  colonies,  and  that  even  for 
the  United  States  their  emancipation  has  not  been  an 
unmixed  advantage.  04*-^ 


§  215.   The  Great  Continental  War. 

But  although  the  War  of  Independence  cost  us  a  great 
deal,  it  did  not  seriously  affect  the  development  of  our 
home  industries.  The  Industrial  Revolution  went  steadily 
on,  and  for  just  thirty  years  (1763-93)  the  country,  though 
not  entirely  at  peace,  was  yet  sufficiently  undisturbed  to 
make  rapid  progress  in  the  new  manufacturing  methods. 
But  in  1789  the  French  Revolution  broke  out,  and  for 
over  twenty  years  Europe  was  plunged  into  a  disastrous 
and  exhausting  conflict.  At  the  first  outbreak  of  the 
Revolution,  England  looked  on  quietly.1  Many  men  were 
openly  glad  that  the  down-trodden  masses  of  the  French 
nation  had  overthrown  the  tyranny  of  an  upper  class,  whose 
only  idea  of  their  duty  in  life  had  been  to  extort  the  last  farth- 
ing from  those  below  them,  in  order  to  spend  it  in  irrespon- 
sible debauchery.  Statesmen  like  Fox  gloried  in  it  ;  2  the 
younger  Pitt  was  anxious  not  to  interfere.3  But  Pitt  was 
forced  to  act  both  by  capitalists  and  merchants,  who  now 
were  equal  with  the  landowners  as  the  two  ruling  powers 
of  England,  and  by  the  landed  aristocracy  as  well.  He 
himself,  no  doubt,  saw  that  the  conquests  which  the  new 
French  Republic  was  already  beginning  to  make  might  help 
France  to  secure  again  her  old  position  as  the  most  formid- 
able rival  of  English  commerce.4  If  now  this  rival  could 
be  finally  struck  down,  England  was  sure  of  the  control  of 
the  world's  markets.  Such,  at  least,  if  not  his  own  motives, 

1  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  v.  p.  445. 

2  Ib.,  p.  453,  and  cf.  pp.  454  to  475. 

3  76.,  pp.  558,  560,  and  vi.  60. 

4  A  hint  of  English  feeling  at  first  that  France  would  suffer  a  temporary 
eclipse  by  the  Revolution  is  given  in  Lecky,  v.  443.     But  soon  the  power 
of  the  Revolution  was  to  be  feared.     On  the  other  hand,  Napoleon  saw 
equally  clearly  that  France's  most  serious  and  persistent  rival  was  Eng- 
land, who  was  the  prime  mover  of  all  coalitions  against  France  ;  cf.  Corre- 
apondance  de  NapoUon  /.,  Vol.  III.  518-520,  and  Hausser, 
Revolution,  pp.  563-565- 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND  INDUSTRY        371 

were  the  considerations  that  must  have  been  urged  upon 
him  by  the  mercantile  party  in  England.  But  apart  from 
these  commercial  interests,  the  whole  body  of  English 
constitutional  sentiment  was  arrayed  against  the  excesses 
of  the  French  Revolutionaries.  The  aristocracy,  the  Church, 
the  middle  classes,  and,  in  fact,  everybody  except  a  few 
ardent  Republicans,  were  horrified  at  the  brutalities  of  the 
Paris  mob.  Those  brutalities  were,  indeed,  worthy  of  all 
execration,  and  yet  an  excuse  may  be  found  for  them  in  the 
centuries  of  legalised  oppression,  rapine,  and  insult  under 
which  the  French  proletariate  had  groaned.  In  England, 
however,  as  elsewhere,  the  excuses  which  history  can  make 
were,  if  not  unknown,  at  least  neither  comprehended  nor 
admitted  ;  though  it  is  somewhat  to  the  credit  of  the  nation 
that  even  then  the  declaration  of  war  came  from  France 
and  not  from  England.1  The  immediate  cause  of  a  war 
that  was  certain  to  have  come  sooner  or  later,  was  the 
French  invasion  of  Holland,  and  after  this  England  was 
plunged  headlong  into  the  great  European  struggle  of 
Monarchy  against  Republicanism.  Pitt  had  in  this  the 
support  of  all  classes  at  home.  The  merchants  and  manu- 
facturers were  only  too  glad  to  see  their  old  rival  ruined  ; 
the  landowners  and  nobility  were,  of  course,  indignant  at 
seeing  the  "  lower  classes,"  even  of  a  foreign  nation,  rise 
against  their  lords,  even  though  their  lords  perhaps  deserved 
their  punishment.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
majority  of  the  English  people  also  believed  that  England 
was  fighting  for  the  great  principles  of  Monarchy  and 
Religion,  exemplified,  unfortunately,  by  a  foolish  king 
and  a  corrupted  priesthood.  The  policy  of  the  English 
Government  was  certainly  approved  by  the  majority 
of  the  nation.  But  the  minority,  who  sympathised  with 
the  Revolution,  included  a  certain  number  of  the  work- 
ing classes  and  others,  among  whom,  especially  after  the 
country  had  felt  the  first  severity  of  the  burdens  imposed 
by  the  war,  a  spirit  of  discontent 2  manifested  itself.  These 

1  Lecky,  History,  vi.  131,  132. 

2  Cf.  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  v.  448,  and  Green,  History 
of  the  English  People,  iv.  314. 


372  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

manifestations,  feeble  and  somewhat  foolish  as  they  were, 
caused  a  veritable  panic  in  the  country.  The  Habeas 
Corpus  Act  was  suspended,  and  all  opposition  silenced  in 
imprisonment.1  In  the  war,  Pitt  was  indomitable  till  his 
death  (in  1805),  inspiring  and  subsidising2  coalitions 
against  France,  or  guiding  England  unflinchingly  when  she 
had  to  fight  single-handed  against  the  world.  At  times, 
as  in  1796,  Britain  was  threatened  with  invasion  by  the 
French,  and  the  Irish,  or,  rather,  a  certain  section  of  them, 
assisted3  her  would-be  invaders.  At  another  time  (1806), 
English  industry  was  threatened  with  ruin  by  Napoleon's 
Berlin  and  Milan  Decrees,  forbidding  Continental  nations 
to  trade  with  us.4  But  at  last  the  great  inspiring  genius 
of  England's  enemies  was  defeated,  and  the  long  years  of 
war  came  to  a  close  in  1815. 

§  216.  Its  Effects  upon  Industry  and  the  Working 
Classes. 

When  peace  came  at  length  it  found  the  resources  of 
the  nation  sorely  tried,  but  not  yet  exhausted.  All  classes 
had  suffered  somewhat,  but  the  working  classes  worst  of 
all.  Yet  the  French  Revolution,  and  the  consequent  wars, 
had  not  retarded  to  a  very  great  extent  the  development  of 
our  industries,  though  the  contest  required  a  large  portion 
of  the  wealth  produced  by  the  new  industrial  system  to  pay 
for  it.5  But  in  one  thing  we  had  had  a  great  advantage 
over  Continental  nations,  for  our  island  was  the  only  country 
in  which  war  was  not  actually  going  on,  and  hence  our 
manufactures  were  undisturbed.  Consequently  England 
was  by  no  means  so  exhausted  as  the  other  participants  in 
the  struggle,  and  she  had,  moreover,  the  ocean-carrying 

1  Green,  History,  iv.  315. 

2  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  201,  remarks  that  Pitt  "  hired  the 
European  monarchs  in  succession,  and  made  very  unsuccessful  bargains." 
Elsewhere  he  is  very  severe  on  Pitt  (p.  470)  for  "  plunging  the  country" 
into  this  twenty-two  years'  war.     This  is  not  quite  fair  to  Pitt,  who  seems 
rather  to  have  tried  to  avoid  war. 

8  Of.  Lecky,  History,  VII.  chs.  xxvii.  and  xxviii. 

*  Cf.  my  British  Commerce,  pp.  94,  95 ;  Commerce  in  Europe,  p.  177 ; 
and  Craik,  History  of  British  Commerce,  iii.  192,  193. 
8  Cf.  Lecky,  History,  vi.  218 ;  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  188. 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND   INDUSTRY        373 

trade  left  secure  to  her  by  our  undisputed  naval  supremacy.1 
But  yet  her  finances  had  been  strained  to  an  enormous 
extent,  and  before  concluding  this  hasty  sketch  of  the  great 
period  of  the  Continental  War,  we  ought  to  mention  the 
financial  difficulties  into  which,  in  spite  of  commercial 
prosperity,  it  plunged  our  country.  None  but  a  rich  State 
could  ever  have  stood  the  terrible  effects  of  this  war  as 
well  as  England  bore  them  at  this  time  ;  but  even  as  it 
was  the  strain  was  tremendous.  The  war  actually  cost 
from  first  to  last  no  less  than  £831,446,449,  and  more 
than  £600,000,000  were  added  to  the  National  Debt.2 
William  Pitt,  who  was  then  Prime  Minister,  tried  every 
means  of  raising  money,  not  only  by  increasing  duties  on 
almost  every  article  that  could  be  taxed,3  but  also  by  a 
system  of  loans.  The  duties  were  placed  upon  spirits, 
plate,  brick,  stones,  glass,  wine,  tea,  coffee,  fruit,  hats, 
horses,  and  dogs ;  and  these  were  followed  by  a  heavy 
income  tax,4  till  very  soon  there  were  very  few  articles  of 
any  description  that  were  left  untaxed.  Loans  were  also 
raised  by  the  Government  upon  a  system  which  has  since 
proved  very  disadvantageous  to  the  country  at  large,6  because 
such  easy  terms  were  given  to  the  lenders  that  practically 
very  little  more  than  65  per  cent,  was  received  for  every 

1  Early  in  the  war  she  gained  the  mastery  of  the  sea  and  became  the 
workshop  of  Europe  ;  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  292. 

a  At  this  period  (1793)  the  revenue  from  taxation  only  was  £19,845,705, 
and  the  expenditure  £24,197,070.  In  1815  the  revenue  was  £72,210,512, 
and  the  expenditure  £92,280,180.  At  the  beginning  of  the  war  with 
Russia  in  1855  the  National  Debt  was  £805,411,690;  in  1882  it  had  been 
reduced  to  £754,455,270;  and  in  1890  to  £689,944,027,  the  annual  interest 
and  annuities  on  which  amount  to  some  £25,000,000.  Cf,  W.  Hewins' 
article  in  the  Co-operative  Annual,  1889.  On  the  Debt  generally,  see 
Leone  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  Pt.  II.,  ch.  iii. 

3  Rogers,  who  criticises  Pitt's  finance  very  severely,  remarks  that  his 
taxes  were  the  worst  conceivable,  because  they  were  nearly  all  on  con- 
sumption, trade,  and  manufactures ;  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  470.     But 
allowance  must  be  made  for  the  desperate  circumstances  of  the  case ;  rf. 
Leone  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  p.  98. 

4  It  was  10  per  cent,  on  incomes  of  £200  and  over ;  Rogers,  Economic 
Interpretation,    p.    474;    and    cf.    Levi,   History    of   British    Commerce, 
p.  99. 

8  Cf.  Lecky's  criticism  of  Pitt's  finance,  History,  v.  53  ;  also  Leone  Levi, 
History  of  British  Commerce,  p.  98  (Pt.  II. ,  ch.  iii.),  and  p.  102. 


374  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

£100  nominally  subscribed.1  Thus  between  1793  and 
1801  no  less  than  eighteen  different  loans  were  raised  by 
Pitt,  but  for  the  nominal  capital  of  £314,000,000  that 
were  funded  as  national  debt  only  £202,000,000  were 
really  received  in  cash.2  Heavy  subsidies,  amounting  to 
some  £57,000,000,  were  also  given  to  our  continental 
allies,  chiefly  Prussia  and  Austria.  No  less  than  £5,000,000 
were  sent  to  German  states  alone  in  1796.3  The  awful 
strain  upon  the  resources  of  the  country  naturally  led  to 
severe  commercial  crises,  and  even  the  Bank  of  England 
was  directed  by  the  Government  to  suspend  cash  payments 4 
of  its  notes  (26th  February,  1797).  These  notes,  which  now 
could  not  be  turned  into  cash,  were  nevertheless  accepted 
loyally  by  all  the  principal  merchants,5  and,  following  their 
example,  by  all  classes  of  the  community ;  and  for  more 
than  twenty  years  the  bank  was  not  permitted  to  cash  its 
own  notes.6  Such  was  the  crisis  through  which  the  com- 
merce of  the  country  had  to  pass,  and  that  it  passed 
through  it  successfully  says  much  for  English  energy  and 
perseverance.  But  if  it  had  not  been  that  the  Industrial 
Revolution,  and  the  inventions  which  caused  it,  had  come, 
as  it  were,  just  in  time  to  increase  our  national  wealth,  it 
is  very  doubtful  whether  the  nation  could  have  passed 
as  successfully  as  it  did  through  an  ordeal  so  severe  as 
this. 

But  the  working  classes  had  suffered  the  most,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  our  manufactures  prospered  and  exports 
increased  all  through  the  war.  In  1793  the  exports  were 
officially  valued  at  over  £17,000,000  ;  for  every  year  after- 
wards they  were  at  least  £22,000,000,  often  more;  in 
1800  over  £34,000,000,  and  in  1815  they  had  quite  doubled 

1  On  some  occasions  the  loan  was  even  issued  below  £50  per  cent ; 
Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  452. 

2  Leone  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  p.  101. 

3  For  exact  amounts  of  foreign  loans  and  subsidies,  1793-1814,  see  Porter, 
Progress  of  the  Nation,  ii.  335. 

4  Craik,  History  of  British  Commerce,  iii.  158-164  ;  and  Levi,  History  of 
British  Commerce,  Pt.  II.,  ch.  i.  p.  75. 

5  Craik,  History  of  British  Commerce,  iii.  163. 

8  For  the  resumption  of  cash  payments  in  1819,  see  Levi,  British  Com- 
merce, pp.  141, 142  (Pt.  II.,  ch.  vi.). 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND   INDUSTRY        375 

cheir  value  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  being  then  over 
£58,000,000  (official  value).1  But  most  of  the  profits 
of  trade  went  into  the  hands  of  the  capitalist  manufac- 
turers, while  taxation  fell  with  special  severity  upon  the 
poor,  since  taxes  were  placed  on  every  necessity  and  con- 
venience of  daily  life.  Even  as  late  as  1842  there  were 
over  a  thousand  articles  in  the  customs  tariff.2  The  price 
of  wheat,  moreover,  rose  to  famine  height ;  from  49s.  3d. 
per  quarter  in  1793  to  69s.  in  1799,  to  113s.  lOd.  in 
1800,  and  106s.  in  1810.3  At  the  same  time  wages  were 
rapidly  falling,4  and  thus  the  burdens  of  the  war  fell  most 
severely  upon  those  least  able  to  pay  for  them.  But  the 
poverty  of  the  poor  was  the  wealth  of  the  landowners,  who 
kept  on  raising  rents  continually,5  and  grew  rich  upon  the 
starvation  of  the  people  ;  for  they  persuaded  Parliament  to 
prohibit  the  importation  of  foreign  corn  except  at  famine 
prices,6  and  avoided,  as  far  as  possible,  even  during  the 
Continental  War,  the  necessary  burdens  of  taxation.7  It 
was  owing  to  their  influence  that  Pitt  raised  fresh  funds 
from  taxes  on  articles  of  trade,  manufacture,  and  general 
consumption.8  The  result  was  seen  in  the  deepening  dis- 
tress of  the  industrial  classes,  and  in  1816  riots  broke  out 
everywhere9 — in  Kent  among  the  agricultural  labourers,  in 
the  Midlands  among  the  miners,  and  at  Nottingham  among 
the  artisans,  who  wreaked  their  vengeance  upon  the  new 
machines  which  they  thought  had  stolen  their  bread.  But 
the  theft  must  rather  be  laid  to  the  charge  of  those  who  did 
not  allow  them  to  participate  in  the  wealth  they  had  helped 
to  create. 

1  Levi,  u.  «.,  Appendix,  pp.  491,  492. 

s  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  p.  269. 

J  Leone  Levi,  British  Commerce,  p.  85  (Pt.  II.,  ch.  ii.),  and  p.  145,  note. 

4  For  further  details  as  to  condition  of  the  working  classes,  cf.  Rogers, 
Six  Centuries,  p.  505 ;  and  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  pp.  145, 
146. 

8  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  p.  188. 
*  Below,  pp.  434,  435. 

7  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  pp.  471,  473,  474. 
•76.,  p.  470. 

9  Annual  Register,  58  ;  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  p.  146. 


376  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

§  217.   Politics  among  the  Working  Classes. 

Such  were  the  economic  effects  of  the  period  of  industrial 
change  and  foreign  war  upon  English  society — the  enrich- 
ment of  the  capitalists  and  landowners  on  the  one  hand, 
but  the  pauperising  of  the  working  classes  on  the  other. 
So  dire  was  the  distress  of  the  workmen  that  they  felt  some- 
thing must  be  done  to  make  their  voice  heard  effectively  in 
the  government  of  the  people.  They  had  tried  violence, 
and  that  had  been  put  down  with  a  strong  hand.  Wiser 
counsels  prevailed.  William  Cobbett,1  in  his  Weekly 
Political  Register  (1803  to  1835),  and  those  who  thought 
like  him,  taught  them  to  believe  that  a  reform  of  Parlia- 
ment would  cure  their  evils  by  giving  them  some  share  in 
the  making  of  the  laws  which  affected  their  lives  and 
actions.  The  influences  of  the  French  Revolution  and  the 
Industrial  Revolution  also  combined  to  arouse  an  active 
political  feeling  amongst  them  ;  for  the  former  excited  a 
sympathetic  feeling  of  revolt  against  unjust  oppression, 
from  what  source  soever  it  might  come,  while  the  latter 
brought  home  to  them  in  their  daily  lives  the  new  and 
sharp  distinctions  between  the  capitalist  autocrat  and  his 
hundreds  of  workpeople  bound  to  him  only  by  a  cash 
nexus,2  who  as  yet  were  powerless  to  resist  his  endeavours 
to  keep  down  their  wages — powerless  because  the  influence 
of  class  interests  in  legislation  3  had  despotically  forbidden 
workmen  to  combine  in  unions  in  their  own  interests. 
Indistinctly,  but  none  the  less  keenly,  the  working  classes 
began  to  feel  that  they  too  must  be  consulted  in  the  councils 
of  the  nation,  and  as  a  preliminary  step  must  gain  an  influ- 
ence over  political  events.  But  their  early  endeavours, 
which  were  attended  by  foolish  rioting,  were  sharply  and 
severely  repressed,  and  the  legislation  following  on  the 
Manchester  Massacre  of  1819,  in  the  shape  of  the  drastic 

1  For  this  active  reformer  (b.  1762,  d.  1835),  see  his  Life,  by  Edward 
Smith  (1878),  and  his  own  works  (cf.  list  at  end  of  his  memoir  in  Diction- 
ary of  National  Biography). 

2  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  pp.  93,  191. 

3  I.e.,  the  Combination  Laws,  and  chiefly  the  40  Geo.  III.,  c.  60  (1800), 
which  prohibited  all  combinations  for  obtaining  an  advance  in  wages  or 
lessening  the  hours  of  v/ork. 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND  INDUSTRY        377 

Six  Acts,  crushed  them  for  a  time.1  Still  we  see  in  these 
first  rude  and  abortive  efforts  of  the  working  classes  the  be- 
ginnings of  a  definite  political  policy,  which  found  expression 
later  on  in  the  help  given  by  the  masses  to  the  agitation 
for  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  and  still  later  to  the  Corn 
Laws  and  the  Chartist  Movement.  The  results  of  the  Reform 
Bill,  which  in  its  immediate  effects  seemed  only  to  benefit 
the  middle  classes,  were  very  disappointing  to  working-class 
politicians,2  but  there  was  nevertheless  among  them  that 
deep-seated  belief  in  the  ultimate  effect  of  political  agitation 
which  has  seen  its  justification,  after  many  years,  in  the 
attention  now  (1895)  paid  by  rival  parties  in  the  State  to 
the  requirements,  or  supposed  requirements,  of  the  British 
workman.  But  it  was  the  two  great  Revolutions  of  a 
hundred  years  ago  in  home  industry  and  foreign  politics 
which  first  roused  the  political  feelings  of  the  masses,  by 

1  Thi8  so-called  "Massacre"  (a  term  which  in  this  case  is  grossly  mis- 
applied) was  only  one  of  a  series  of  riots,  originating  in  a  desire  for  political 
reform,  that  occurred  in  various  parts  of  England.     In  1816  there  were 
riots  in  the  agricultural  districts  of  the  East  of  England,  and  in  December 
of  that  year  others  at  Spa  Fields.     In  March  1817  the  "  Blanketeers " 
caused  disturbances  at  Manchester,  and  in  June  there  were  risings  in 
Derbyshire  also.     In  1819  there  were  riots  among  the  working-classes  in 
many  places  to  petition  for  reform,  and  proclamations  were  issued  against 
seditious  meetings.     The  Manchester  riot  occurred  on  August  16th,  1819, 
when  the  mob  was  attacked  by  the  yeomanry  and  one  or  two  persons  killed. 

The  "  Six  Acts  "  were  passed  in  consequence  of  these  troubles,  and  may 
be  briefly  summarised  as  follows  : — 

(1)  Nov.  29 — Introduced  by  the  Lord  Chancellor:  An  Act  to  prevent 
delay  in  the  administration  of  justice  in  cases  of  misdemeanour.  (2)  Intro- 
duced by  Lord  Sidmouth  :  An  Act  to  prevent  the  training  of  persons  to 
the  use  of  arms  and  the  practice  of  military  evolutions  and  exercise.  (3) 
An  Act  for  the  more  effectual  prevention  and  punishment  of  blasphemous 
and  seditious  libels.  (4)  An  Act  to  authorise  justices  of  the  peace  in  cer- 
tain disturbed  counties  to  seize  and  detain  arms  collected  and  kept  for 
purposes  dangerous  to  the  public  peace,  and  to  continue  in  force  till  March 
25,  1822.  (5)  Introduced  by  Lord  Castlereagh  :  An  Act  to  subject  certain 
publications  to  the  duties  of  stamps  on  newspapers,  and  to  make  other 
regulations  for  restraining  the  abuses  arising  from  the  publication  of 
blasphemous  and  seditious  libels.  (6)  Introduced  by  Lord  Sidmouth  in 
the  Lords  and  (on  Nov.  29)  by  Lord  Castlereagh  in  the  Commons  :  An  Act 
for  more  effectually  preventing  seditious  meetings  and  assemblies  out  of 
doors,  to  continue  in  force  for  five  years  (rf.  Acland  and  Ransome's  English 
Political  History,  p.  170). 

2  Toynbee,  Indtistrial  Revolution,  p.  207.         • 


378  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  misery  which  the  War  with  Republican  France  inflicted 
upon  them,  and  by  the  new  industrial  conditions  already 
brought  into  play  by  the  introduction  of  machinery  and 
accentuated  by  the  effects  of  that  war.  A  time  of  industrial 
transition  is  nearly  always  severe  and  painful  to  those  who 
have  to  go  through  it ;  but  the  pain  and  misery  of  the 
great  transition  in  English  industry,  both  manufacturing  and 
agricultural,  was  increased  tenfold  by  the  terrible  foreign 
conflict  into  which  England  was  inevitably  plunged.  That 
transition  period,  however,  brought  home  to  the  working 
classes,  miserable  and  degraded  as  they  then  were,  the 
necessity  of  some  political  reform  that  would  give  them  a 
voice  in  the  management  of  their  own  affairs.  They  were 
far  too  weak  then  to  gain  a  hearing  in  Parliament,  but  as 
time  went  on  and  their  power  increased,  their  voice  has 
been  heard  more  and  more  clearly  in  English  politics. 

§   218.  Political  Results  of  the  Industrial  Revolution. 

Now  it  is  noticeable  that  the  Industrial  Revolution, 
which  caused  so  much  misery  to  the  working  classes  at 
first,  gave  them  in  the  end  much  of  their  present  political 
power  by  the  very  nature  of  its  economic  conditions.  The 
use  of  machinery  worked  by  steam  power  necessitated  the 
concentration  of  workers  into  factories,  where  this  power 
could  easily  be  supplied  to  a  set  of  machines ;  and  since 
factories,  again,  to  obtain  steam  power,  must  be  situated 
near  a  convenient  supply  of  coal,  it  resulted  that  the 
population  working  in  manufactures  was  compelled  to 
concentrate  itself  on  the  great  coal-fields.  To  this  migra- 
tion of  the  population  to  the  coal  districts  of  the  North  and 
North-west  we  have  already  alluded,  and  it  only  remains  to 
point  out  here  how  the  growth  of  great  manufacturing 
towns,  resulting  from  this  process,  created  immediately  the 
political  question,  as  to  the  proper  representation  of  such 
large  masses  of  people  in  Parliament.  The  system  then  in 
vogue  has  been  described  so  frequently  that  it  is  un- 
necessary to  say  more  about  it,  except,  perhaps,  to  point  out 
the  great  length  of  time  it  took  to  overcome  the  influence 
of  the  opposition  to  reform.  One  may  note,  also,  the  class 


WAR,  POLITICS,  AND   INDUSTRY        379 

jealousy  of  the  great  landed  proprietors  of  the  House  of 
Lords  against  the  new  manufacturing  population  that  was 
demanding  admittance  into  the  councils  of  the  nation. 
The  jealousy  was  instinctive,  and  no  doubt  well  founded, 
but  it  has  been  repaid  by  the  attempts,  in  later  years, 
to  abolish  the  House  which  so  adequately  represents  the 
landed  interest.  But,  however  naturally  jealous  the 
landed  interest  may  have  been,  it  was  palpably  absurb  to 
refuse  to  transfer  the  franchise  of  Penryn  to  the  huge 
town  of  Manchester,  or  that  of  East  Retford  to  Birmingham,1 
as  was  the  case  in  1828,  and  such  exhibitions  of  opposition 
to  the  inevitable  could  only  arouse  the  scorn,  if  not  the 
anger,  of  the  masses  of  the  people.  But  the  Reform  Bill 
was  passed  at  last,  and  the  manufacturing  population  of  the 
towns  gained  the  first  step  in  their  progress  towards 
political  influence.  It  was,  however,  only  a  step,  and 
many  more  had  to  be  taken  before  they  could  be  said  to  be 
adequately  represented  in  the  life  of  the  nation.  But  the 
history  of  their  progress  towards  the  franchise  is  a  matter 
for  the  political  historian  ;  the  economist  need  only  notice 
that  the  coal  mine  and  the  spinning  jenny  revolutionised 
the  face  of  English  politics  as  effectually  as  the  guillotine 
changed  the  course  of  the  politics  of  France.  Of  course 
the  blood-stained  political  fireworks  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion have  attracted  a  larger  share  of  the  attention  of  the 
ordinary  historian,  even  in  England,  than  has  ever  been 
given  to  the  less  obvious  action  of  industrial  forces,  but  it 
is  often  the  case  that  historians  perceive  nothing  but  the 
obvious.  Even  in  dealing  with  the  French  Revolution 
itself,  that  favourite  theme  for  those  who  strive  after  the 
dramatic  and  picturesque,  but  are  ignorant  of  all  but  the 
most  elemeutary  methods  of  historical  drama  or  depiction, 
the  great  industrial  and  economic  features  of  the  time  are 
hopelessly  neglected,  while  page  after  page  is  devoted  to  the 
pretentious  vapourings  of  the  second-rate  philosophers  and 
pamphleteers  of  whose  works  the  average  Frenchman  of 
the  Revolution  was  profoundly  ignorant.  It  is  the  weak- 
ness of  literary  men  to  believe  that  literature  is  the  main 

1  Acland  and  Ransome's  Political  History,  p.  175. 


38o  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

thing  in  life,  and  that  a  pamphlet  can  change  the  destiny 
of  a  nation.  But  it  is  the  men  who  act,  and  not  those 
who  merely  talk  or  write,  who  bring  about  great  national 
changes  ;  and  while  philosophers  were  prattling  and 
politicians  were  orating,  the  men  of  action  were  fighting 
for  the  freedom  and  supremacy  of  England  abroad,  or 
quietly  developing  her  magnificent  industrial  resources  at 
home.  Amid  foreign  war  and  political  disturbance  the 
miner  and  the  weaver  were  shaping  and  changing  the 
future  course  of  the  nation.  When  peace  was  restored, 
England  had  definitely  become  the  workshop  of  the  world, 
and  her  industry  had  definitely  completed  its  transition 
from  the  domestic  to  the  factory  system.  Of  this  system, 
with  its  enormous  advantages,  but  also  enormous  evils,  we 
must  now  speak. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  AND  ITS  RESULTS 

§  219.   The  Results  of  the  Introduction  of  the  Factory 
System. 

THE  great  war  which  has  just  been  mentioned  in  the  preced- 
ing chapter  found  England  at  its  beginning  a  nation  whose 
mainstay  was  agriculture,  with  manufactures  increasing,  it 
is  true,  but  still  only  of  secondary  importance.  At  the 
commencement  of  the  war  English  workers  spun  and  wove 
in  their  cottages ;  at  its  close  they  were  herded  together  in 
factories,  and  were  the  servants  of  machinery.  The  manu- 
facturing population  was  rapidly  increasing  and  the  agricul- 
tural steadily  declining.1  The  capitalist  element  had  become 
the  main  feature  in  production,  and  the  capitalist  manufac- 
turers the  main  figures  in  English  industry,  rivalling  and 
often  overtopping  the  landed  gentry.  But  a  man  cannot 
become  a  capitalist  without  capital,  and  capital  cannot  be 
accumulated  without  labour,  though  these  remarkably 
obvious  facts  are  constantly  forgotten.  The  large  capitalists 
of  earlier  manufacturing  days  obtained  their  capital,  after 
the  first  small  beginnings,  from  the  wealth  produced  by 
their  workmen,  and  from  their  own  acuteness  in  availing 
themselves  of  new  inventions.  Of  the  wealth  produced  by 
their  workmen  they  took  nearly  the  whole,  often  leaving 
their  employe's  only  enough  to  live  upon  while  producing 
more  wealth  for  their  masters.  Hence  it  may  be  said  that 
capital  was  in  this  case  the  result  of  abstinence,  though  the 
abstinence  was  on  the  part  of  the  workman  and  not  of  his 
employer,  as  we  shall  shortly  see. 

This,  then,  was  the  immediate  result  of  the  factory 
system  :  the  growth  of  large  accumulations  of  capital  in  the 
hands  of  the  new  master-manufacturers,  who,  with  their 

1  Cf.  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  p.  52. 

381 


382  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

new  machinery,  undisturbed  by  internal  war,  were  able  to 
supply  the  nations  of  Europe  with  clothing  at  a  time  when 
these  nations  were  far  too  much  occupied  in  internecine 
conflicts  on  their  own  soil  to  produce  food  and  clothing  for 
themselves.  Even  Napoleon,  in  spite  of  all  his  edicts 
directed  against  English  trade,  was  fain  to  clothe  his  soldiers 
in  Yorkshire  stuffs  when  he  led  them  to  Moscow.1  It  was 
no  wonder  that  the  growth  of  capital  was  rapid  and  enor- 
mous. Other  results  followed.  The  formerly  widespread 
cottage  industry  was  now  aggregated  into  a  few  districts, 
nearly  all  in  Lancashire  and  Yorkshire,  for  the  sake  of  the 
coal  which  was  there  so  readily  available.  Not  only  that, 
but  the  workpeople  themselves  were  more  closely  concen- 
trated in  the  conditions  of  their  work  than  they  had  been 
before.  The  factory  had  become  the  dominant  feature  in 
industry,  and  that  for  obvious  reasons.  For  steam  can  only 
be  generated  in  a  fixed  spot,  and  the  motive  power  furnished 
thereby  can  only  be  distributed  over  a  small  area,  and  thus 
it  became  necessary  to  have  all  the  workpeople  close  to- 
gether in  one  large  building.  That  is  the  raison  d'etre  of 
the  factory  system,  but  even  if  the  necessity  for  concentra- 
tion could  be  obviated  by  the  use  of  some  other  motive 
power,  such  as  electricity,  it  is  doubtful  whether  manufac- 
turers would  alter  their  arrangements  in  this  respect.  For 
there  are  also,  besides  the  question  of  the  supply  of  power, 
various  economies  of  administration  and  management,  to 
say  nothing  of  manufacture  or  purchase  and  sale,  which 
make  the  system  of  working  with  a  number  of  people 
together  in  factories  exceedingly  advantageous ; 2  and 
these  considerations  would  continue  to  have  weight  even  if 
some  other  motive  power  than  steam  were  to  be  in  future 
introduced. 

But  factories  have  their  disadvantages  as  well  as  their 
uses,  and  in  the  early  days  of  the  factory  system  these  evils 
were  painfully  apparent,  at  any  rate  as  far  as  they  affected 
the  comfort  of  the  workers.  Persons  of  all  ages  and  both 

1  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  292. 

2  Cf.  L.  L.  Price  on  Domestic  Industry  in  Palgrave's  Dictionary  of  Politi- 
cal Economy. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  383 

sexes  were  collected  together  in  huge  buildings,  under  no 
moral  control,  with  no  arrangements  for  the  preservation  of 
health,  comfort,  or  decency.1  The  enormous  extension  of 
trade  rendered  extra  work  necessary,  and  the  mills  ran  all 
night  long  as  well  as  by  day.  There  was  as  yet  no  legisla- 
tion as  to  the  hours  or  conditions  of  work.  The  machines 
made  "  to  shorten  labour  "  resulted  in  many  cases  in  vastly 
extending  it ;  while  in  others  again  they  took  away  all  the 
means  of  livelihood  from  the  old  class  of  hand-workers  with 
terrible  and  surprising  suddenness. 

§  228.   Machinery  and  Hand  Labour. 

The  substitution  of  machinery  for  hand  labour  progressed, 
however,  with  considerable  irregularity.  In  some  cases  it 
took  place  very  rapidly,  and  caused  great  distress ;  in 
others  it  came  more  slowly  and  with  less  misery  to  the 
worker.  In  the  hand  wool-combing  industry,  machinery 
was  introduced  very  slowly,  and  it  was  contended  that  a 
machine  could  never  accomplish  this  branch  of  manufacture 
with  the  excellence  achieved  by  manual  effort.  It  was  not 
till  1840  that  the  wool-combing  machine  seriously  threat- 
ened the  hand-comber,  and  even  then  many  believed  it 
would  never  supplant  him.2  But  this  was  an  exceptional 
case ;  in  most  branches  of  manufacture  machinery  was 
introduced  very  quickly,  and  the  workmen  bitterly  resented 
its  introduction.  It  was  useless  for  economists  to  point  out 
the  ultimate  advantages  it  would  confer  upon  labour  ;  the 
workman  only  saw  that  it  threw  him  out  of  employment 
or  lessened  his  wages.  From  his  own  point  of  view  he 
was  undoubtedly  right.  The  advantages  so  praised  by 
economists  could  not  accrue  to  him  immediately,  and  it 
was  but  a  poor  consolation  to  reflect  that  the  next  genera- 
tion would  reap  them,  while  his  own  pocket  was  empty 
and  his  cottage  bare.  Hence  came  that  fierce,  but  natural, 
revolt  against  the  new  order  of  things,  which  found  expres- 
sion in  riots  and  outrage.  The  labourers  sought  to  destroy 

1  Taylor,  Modern  Factory  System,  pp.  88  (immorality),  169  (insanitary 
conditiona). 
8  Burnley,  Wool  and  Woolcvmbing,  p.  166. 


384  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  new  machinery ;  and  the  struggle  of  what  were  called 
"  the  iron  men,"  against  human  beings  of  flesh  and  blood, 
long  continued  to  be  a  source  of  controversy  and  complaint, 
more  especially  as  the  workmen  saw  that  the  profits  l  made 
by  these  iron  men  went  almost  entirely  into  the  hands  of 
their  masters.  In  1812  occurred  the  Luddite  Riots,  when 
much  machinery  was  destroyed  in  Nottingham  and  the 
Midland  counties ;  in  1816  they  broke  out  again,  and 
in  1826  there  were  riots  in  Lancashire  to  destroy  the 
power  looms.2  Besides  these  there  were  numerous  other 
acts  of  violence  committed  at  various  times  in  other  parts 
of  the  country.  But  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the 
greatest  of  the  various  riots  that  occurred  at  the  beginning 
of  this  century  had  a  political  rather  than  industrial  origin. 
The  agitation  for  the  Reform  Bill  produced  far  more  violence 
than  the  introduction  of  machinery.  The  reasons  for  this 
are  easily  perceived;  for  machines  were  not  introduced 
simultaneously  in  all  trades,  or  in  all  parts  of  the  country,3 
and  therefore  the  introduction  of  single  machines  here  and 
there  only  affected  a  small  portion  of  the  working-classes  at 
any 'given  time  ;  whereas  the  political  issues  involved  in  the 
question  of  Reform  were  brought  before  the  country  as  a 
whole,  and  at  the  same  period,  and  affected  everybody 
equally.  Perhaps,  also,  the  half-unconscious  good  sense, 
which  has  at  various  times  been  visible  among  the  working 
classes,  led  them  to  perceive  that  in  the  end  they  would 
gain  far  more  by  the  acquisition  of  political  power  than  by 
the  destruction  of  industrial  improvements. 

This  substitution  of  machinery  for  manual  labour  pro- 
ceeded, as  has  been  noted  in  wool-combing,4  with  somewhat 
unequal  steps.  It  occurred  far  more  rapidly  and  more 
markedly  in  spinning  than  in  weaving ;  and,  even  in  spin- 
ning, the  cotton  manufacture  was  affected  sooner  than  the 
woollen.5  In  framework  knitting  the  application  of  steam- 

1  Even  Porter  (in  his  Progress  of  the.  Nation,  iii.  3)  remarks  how  great  is 
the  "  inequality  in  the  division  among  the  people  of  the  produce  of  the 
national  industry  "  ;  though  he  tries  to  take  the  most  favourable  view  of 
the  case.  2  Gf.  Taylor,  Modern  Factory  System,  pp.  157-158. 

3  Cf.  above,  p.  341,  note.  4  Above,  p.  383. 

6  Cf.  generally,  Taylor,  Modern  Factory  System,  pp.  81,  82. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  385 

power  was  long  delayed  by  the  great  cheapness  of  labour  in 
that  trade,  owing  to  which  manufacturers  were  slow  to 
adopt  machinery  worked  by  steam,  since  it  seemed  to 
them  that  they  could  not  thereby  make  more  profit  than 
they  did  already.1  On  a  general  survey  of  the  manufac- 
turers of  the  country,  we  may,  in  fact,  say  that  machinery 
was  used  in  all  branches  for  spinning  2  by  the  earlier  part  of 
the  century,  but  not  for  weaving,  and  it  was  not  till 
between  1830  and  1840  that  the  use  of  weaving  machines 
seriously  threatened  the  hand-looms.3  The  factory  system, 
however,  had  from  the  first  an  indirect  influence  over  the 
weaver,  because  the  new  spinning  machines  supplied 
yarn  so  quickly  that  weavers  no  longer  used  the  yarn 
spun  by  their  wives  and  children,  but  bought  it  from  the 
factories.  Hence  there  was  a  tendency  for  them  to  collect 
round  the  new  mills,4  where  yarn  was  so  readily  obtainable, 
although  they  did  not  actually  work  in  them. 

§   221.  Loss  of  Rural  Life  and  of  Bye-Industries. 

Thus  from  the  first  there  was  that  tendency  towards  con- 
centration of  population  which  is  so  marked  a  feature  of 
the  Industrial  Revolution.  This  implied  also  two  other 
changes,  both  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  working 
classes.  In  the  first  place  their  life  lost  that  rural  char- 
acter6 which  had  distinguished  the  domestic  system  of 
industry  when  the  weaver  worked  in  his  cottage  in  some 
village  or  country  town,  and  varied  his  manufacturing  work 
with  rural  occupations.  Now  he  had  to  live  close  by  the 
factory,  where  he  and  his  family  worked  all  day  long  amid 
iron  machines  and  stone  walls,  and  the  garden  and  allot- 
ment were  things  of  the  past.  The  freedom  and  indepen- 
dence, too,  of  the  old  life  were  gone,  and  the  sound  of  the 
factory  bell  and  the  rigidity  of  the  factory  hours  now 
formed  an  unpleasant  contrast,  which  the  workers  at  first 

1  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  620. 
8  Reports,  1833,  xx.  336. 

3  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  635 ;   Taylor,  Modem  Factory 
System,  p.  81. 
«  Reports,  Misctllantous,  1806,  iii.  577.  *  Above,  p.  327. 

2  B 


386  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

greatly  disliked.1  Restraint  and  regularity  were  the  features 
of  the  new  system,  and  though  they  are  undoubtedly  con- 
ducive to  increased  work,  they  are  not  always  relished  by 
the  workman.  That  is,  however,  perhaps  only  a  minor 
point.  The  second  great  effect  of  the  concentration  of 
population  under  the  factory  system  was  the  loss  of  bye- 
employments.  We  have  seen  already  how  important  these 
were 2  in  increasing  wages ;  but  now  they  were  quite  cut 
off.  Spinning  had  been  practised  by  the  female  members 
of  almost  every  household,  whether  the  family  was  engaged 
in  agriculture  or  manufactures ;  but  now  the  agriculturist 
could  no  longer  find  a  buyer  for  his  homespun  yarn,  and 
the  weaver  no  longer  used  the  produce  of  his  wife's  spinning 
wheel,  but  bought  it  from  the  factory.  Conversely  the 
manufacturing  artisan  no  longer  went  out  into  the  fields 
for  a  little  harvest  work  or  supplemented  his  earnings  at 
the  loom  by  the  produce  of  his  leisure  time  in  his  allotment. 
The  artisan  was  now  confined  strictly  to  the  factory,  and 
the  agriculturist  strictly  to  the  fields.3  There  was  no  over- 
lapping of  employments ;  the  hum  of  the  spinning-wheel 
grew  silent  in  the  cottage,  and  the  weaver  no  longer  breathed 
the  fresh  scents  of  hay  and  harvest  in  the  country  air. 
The  village  lost  the  artisan,  and  the  artisan  lost  the  village, 
while  the  workers  both  of  country  and  of  town  lost  a  very 
real  addition  to  their  wages.  Their  earnings  were  now 
only  what  they  actually  brought  home  in  money  from  the 
mill  or  farm,  and  the  useful  supplements  which  they  had 
formerly  been  able  to  gain  by  other  work  no  longer  helped 
to  fill  the  family  purse.  In  more  ways  than  one  it  was  a 
very  real  loss,  and  as  even  money  wages  were  decreasing,4 
their  lot  under  the  new  system  could  not  seem  to  them 
particularly  bright.  It  is  not,  therefore,  surprising  that 
men  showed  their  discontent  by  resisting  the  introduction 
of  new  machines. 

1  At  Ipswich  especially,  there  was  a  great  dislike  to  factory  work ; 
Reports  (1840),  xxiii.  196. 

2  Above,  pp.  328-330.        3  Cf.  also  Taylor,  Modern  Factory  System,  p.  92. 
4  From  1811  to  1842  wages  declined,  it  is  said,  about  35  per  cent.  ;  cf. 

Reports,  181"),  xv.  51  (Muggeridge's  figures).  See  also  Porter,  Progress  of 
the  Nation,  ii.  252,  Tables,  where  spinners,  weavers,  and  labourers  show  a 
marked  decrease  in  wages. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  387 

§  222.  Contemporary  Evidence  of  the  New  Order  of 
Tilings. 

A  very  good  idea  of  the  effects  of  the  introduction  of  the 
factory  system  upon  the  operatives  may  be  formed  from  a  re- 
solution unanimously  adopted,  after  some  riots  similar  to  those 
referred  to  above,  by  the  magistrates  at  the  quarter  sessions 
of  Preston,  in  Lancashire,  and  dated  November  llth,  1779, 
wherein  it  was  resolved  :  "  That  the  sole  cause  of  great  riots 
was  the  new  machines  employed  in  the  cotton  manufacture  : 
that  the  county  [i.e.  the  manufacturers]  had  greatly  bene- 
fited by  their  erection,  and  that  the  destroying  them  in  one 
county  only  led  to  their  erection  in  another ;  and  that  if  a 
total  stop  were  put  by  the  legislature  to  their  erection  in 
Britain  it  would  only  tend  to  their  establishment  in  foreign 
countries,  to  the  detriment  of  the  trade  in  Britain." l  But 
better  than  the  cold  words  of  a  formal  resolution  is  the 
description  of  the  country  round  Manchester,  published  in 
1795  by  Dr  Aikin.2  He  points  out  what  we  have  already 
referred  to,  that  "  the  sudden  invention  and  improvement 
of  machines  to  shorten  labour  have  had  a  surprising  influ- 
ence to  extend  our  trade,  and  also  to  call  in  hands  from  all 
parts,  particularly  children  for  the  cotton  mills."  He  says 
that  domestic  life  is  seriously  endangered  by  the  extensive 
employment  of  women  and  girls  in  the  mills,  for  they  had 
become  ignorant  of  all  household  duties.  "  The  females 
are  wholly  uninstructed  in  knitting,  sewing,  and  other 
domestic  affairs  requisite  to  make  them  frugal  wives  and 
mothers.  This  is  a  very  great  misfortune  to  them  and  to 
the  public,  as  is  sadly  proved  by  a  comparison  of  the 
labourers  in  husbandry,  and  those  of  manufacturers  in 
general.  In  the  former  we  meet  with  neatness,  cleanliness, 
and  comfort ;  in  the  latter  with  filth,  rags,  and  poverty." 
He  also  mentions  the  great  prevalence  of  fevers  among 
employe's  in  cotton  mills,  consequent  upon  the  utterly  in- 
sanitary conditions  under  which  they  laboured.  But 

1  Quoted  in  The  History  of  the  Factory  Movement,  i.  11,  by  "Alfred" 
(Samuel  Kydd). 

3  The  full  title  is  A  Description  of  the  Country  from  30  to  40  miles  round 
Manchester.  John  Aikin,  M.D.  (1747-1822),  was  a  brother  of  Mrs 
Barbauld. 


388  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

nowhere  were  the  evils  which  accompanied  the  sudden 
growth  of  wealth  and  of  industry  so  marked  as  in  the  case 
of  those  miserable  beings  who  were  brought  to  labour  in 
the  new  mills  under  the  apprentice  system.  Their  life 
was  literally  and  without  exaggeration  simply  that  of 
slaves. 

§  223.  English  Slavery.  The  Apprentice  System. 
When  factories  were  first  built  there  was  a  strong  re- 
pugnance on  the  pail  of  parents  who  had  been  accustomed 
to  the  old  family  life  under  the  domestic  system  to  send 
their  children  into  these  places.  It  was,  in  fact,  considered 
a  disgrace  so  to  do :  the  epithet  of  "  factory  girl "  was  the 
most  insulting  that  could  be  applied  to  a  young  woman, 
and  girls  who  had  once  been  in  a  factory  could  rarely  find 
employment  elsewhere.1  Perhaps  this  was  due  to  the 
shocking  immorality  (especially  of  the  masters)  in  the  early 
factories.2  It  was  not  until  the  wages  of  the  workman  had 
been  reduced  to  a  starvation  level  that  they  consented  to 
their  children  and  wives  being  employed  in  the  mills. 
But  the  manufacturers  wanted  labour  by  some  means 
or  other,  and  they  got  it  from  the  workhouses.  They 
sent  for  parish  apprentices  from  all  parts  of  England,  and 
pretended  to  apprentice  them  to  the  new  employments  just 
introduced.3  The  millowners  systematically  communicated 
with  the  overseers  of  the  poor,  who  arranged  a  day  for  the 
inspection  of  pauper  children.  Those  chosen  by  the  manu- 
facturer were  then  conveyed  by  waggons  or  canal  boats  to 
their  destination,4  and  from  that  moment  were  doomed  to 
slavery.  Sometimes  regular  traffickers  would  take  the 
place  of  the  manufacturer,  and  transfer  a  number  of 
children  to  a  factory  district,  and  there  keep  them,  gener- 
ally in  some  dark  cellar,  till  they  could  hand  them  over  to 
a  millowner  in  want  of  hands,6  who  would  come  and 
examine  their  height,  strength,  and  bodily  capacities, 

1  History  of  the  Factory  Movement,  i.  16. 

2  Cf.  Gaskell,  The  Manufacturing  Population  of  England,  ch.  iv. 

3  The  Heads  of  the  Bill  permitting  this  (1796)  are  given  in  the  History  of 
the  Factory  Movement,  i.  4,  5. 

4 /&.,!.  17.  6/&.,p.  17. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  389 

exactly  as  did  the  slave-dealers  in  the  American  markets. 
After  that  the  children  were  simply  at  the  mercy  of  their 
owners,  nominally  as  apprentices,  but  in  reality  as  mere 
slaves,  who  got  no  wages,  and  whom  it  was  not  worth  while 
even  to  feed  or  clothe  properly,  because  they  were  so  cheap, 
and  their  places  could  be  so  easily  supplied.  It  was  often 
arranged  by  the  parish  authorities,  in  order  to  get  rid  of 
imbeciles,  that  one  idiot  should  be  taken  by  the  millowner 
with  every  twenty  sane  children.1  The  fate  of  these  un- 
happy idiots  was  even  worse  than  that  of  the  others.  The 
secret  of  their  final  end  has  never  been  disclosed,  but  we 
can  form  some  idea  of  their  awful  sufferings  from  the  hard- 
ships of  the  other  victims  to  capitalist  greed  and  cruelty. 
Their  treatment  was  most  inhuman.  The  hours  of  their 
labour  were  limited  only  by  exhaustion,  after  many  modes 
of  torture 2  had  been  unavailingly  applied  to  force  con- 
tinued work.  Illness  was  no  excuse :  no  child  was 
accounted  ill  till  it  was  positively  impossible  to  force 
him  or  her  to  continue  to  labour,  in  spite  of  all  the 
cruelty  which  the  ingenuity  of  a  tormentor  could  suggest.3 
Children  were  often  worked  sixteen  hours  a  day,  by  day  and 
by  night.4  Even  Sunday  was  used  as  a  convenient  time  to 
clean  the  machinery.5  The  author  of  The  History  of  the 
Factory  Movement  writes :  "  In  stench,  in  heated  rooms, 
amid  the  constant  whirling  of  a  thousand  wheels,  little 
fingers  and  little  feet  were  kept  in  ceaseless  action,  forced 
into  unnatural  activity  by  blows  from  the  heavy  hands  and 
feet  of  the  merciless  overlooker,  and  the  infliction  of  bodily 
pain  by  instruments  of  punishment,  invented  by  the  sharp- 
ened ingenuity  of  insatiable  selfishness."6  They  were  fed 
upon  the  coarsest  and  cheapest  food,  often  with  the  same  as 
that  served  out  to  the  pigs  of  their  master.7  They  slept  by 

1  History  of  the  Factory  Movement,  i.  pp.  17,  43. 

2  For  ghastly  examples  see  the  Memoirs  of  Robert  Blincoe,  or,  more  con- 
veniently, Taylor,  Modern  Factory  System,  p.  192.  s  fb. 

*  Alfred,  History  of  the  Factory  Movement,  i.  21  ;  and  Taylor,  Modern 
Factory  System,  p.  196. 

6  Alfred,  i.  21. 

•  Alfred,  History  of  the  Factory  Movement,  i.  21,  22. 

7  Memoirs  of  Blincoe,  quoted  by  Alfred,  History  of  the  Factory  Movement, 
i.  23  ;  also  corroborated  by  other  evidence,  i.  25. 


390  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

turns  and  in  relays,  in  filthy  beds  which  were  never  cool  ; 
for  one  set  of  children  were  sent  to  sleep  in  them  as  soon 
as  the  others  had  gone  off  to  their  daily  or  nightly  toil. 
There  was  often  no  discrimination  of  sexes ;  and  disease, 
misery,  and  vice  grew  as  in  a  hotbed  of  contagion.  Some 
of  these  miserable  beings  tried  to  run  away.  To  prevent 
their  doing  so,  those  suspected  of  this  tendency  had  irons 
riveted  on  their  ankles,  with  long  links  reaching  up  to  the 
hips,  and  were  compelled  to  work  and  sleep  in  these  chains, 
young  women  and  girls,2  as  well  as  boys,  suffering  this 
brutal  treatment.  Many  died,  and  were  buried  secretly 
at  night  in  some  desolate  spot,  lest  people  should  notice 
the  number  of  the  graves  ;  and  many  committed  suicide.3 
The  catalogue  of  cruelty  and  misery  is  too  long  to  recite 
here  ;  it  may  be  read  in  the  Memoirs  of  Robert  Blincoe* 
himself  an  apprentice,  or  in  the  pages  of  the  Blue-books  of 
the  beginning  of  this  century,  in  which  even  the  methodical 
and  dry  language  of  official  documents  is  startled  into  life 
by  the  misery  it  has  to  relate.  It  is  perhaps  not  well  for 
me  to  say  more  about  the  subject,  for  one  dares  not  trust 
oneself  to  try  and  set  down  calmly  all  that  might  be  told 
about  this  awful  page  in  the  history  of  industrial  England. 
I  need  only  remark,  that  during  this  period  of  unheeded 
and  ghastly  suffering  in  the  mills  of  our  native  land,  the 
British  philanthropist  was  occupying  himself  with  agitating 
for  the  relief  of  the  woes  of  negro  slaves  in  other  countries. 
He,  of  course,  succeeded  in  raising  the  usual  amount  of 
sentiment,  and  perhaps  more  than  the  usual  amount  of 
money,  on  behalf  of  an  inferior  and  barbaric  race,  who  have 
repaid  him  by  relapsing  into  a  contented  indolence  and  a 
scarcely  concealed  savagery  which  have  gone  far  to  ruin  our 

1  Of.  Alfred,  History,  i.  17  ;  Taylor,  Modern  Factory  System,  p.  198 ;  cf. 
also  evidence  of  J.  Paterson,  overseer,  Dundee,  before  the  Sadler  Com- 
mittee, 1832. 

-  Blincoe,  quoted  in  Alfred's  History  of  the  Factoiy  Movement,  i.  23. 

8  Ib.,  i.  24,  25.     No  inquests  were  ever  held. 

4  These  first  appeared  in  Vol.  I.  of  a  periodical  called  The  Lion,  pub- 
lished by  Richard  Carlile,  62  Fleet  Street,  London,  but  afterwards  issued 
separately.  I  have  seen  a  separate  copy  in  the  Manchester  Free  Library  ; 
cf.  also  No.  21  of  The  Poor  Man's  Advocate  (Manchester,  June  9,  1832) ; 
there  are  copious  extracts  in  Taylor  and  Alfred,  u.  «. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  391 

possessions  in  the  West  Indies.  The  spectacle  of  England 
buying  the  freedom  of  black  slaves  by  riches  drawn  from 
the  labour  of  her  white  ones,  affords  an  interesting  study 
for  the  cynical  philosopher. 

All  this  time  the  friends  of  the  negro  were  harrowing  the 
feelings  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  in  which  these 
daily  and  nightly  cruelties  were  perpetrated  with  tales  of 
the  sufferings  of  the  unfortunate  black  men.  No  notice 
was  taken  of  the  horrors  going  on  under  the  very  eyes  of 
the  agitators,  till  at  length  the  miseries  of  the  factories 
began  to  avenge  themselves  upon  a  callous  population  in 
the  shape  of  malignant  fevers,  bred  from  the  horribly 
insanitary  conditions  of  the  mills  in  which  these  wretched 
creatures  worked. 

§  224.   The  Beginning  of  the  Factory  Agitation. 

The  state  of  things  in  factories  where  large  numbers  of 
apprentices  were  employed  became,  in  fact,  so  bad  that  at 
last  something  had  to  be  done.  In  1802  an  Act1  was 
passed,  by  the  influence  of  the  first  Sir  Robert  Peel,  "  for 
the  preservation  of  the  health  and  morals  of  apprentices  and 
others  employed  in  cotton  and  other  mills."  It  is  a  signifi- 
cant fact  that  the  immediate  cause  of  this  bill  was  the  fear- 
ful spread  through  the  factory  districts  of  Manchester  of 
epidemic  disease,  owing  to  the  overwork,  scanty  food, 
wretched  clothing,  long  hours,  bad  ventilation,  and  over- 
crowding in  unhealthy  dwellings  of  the  workpeople,  especi- 
ally the  children.2  The  hours  of  work  were  '  reduced '  to 
only  twelve  per  day.  This  Act,  however,  did  not  apply  to 
children  residing  near  the  factory  where  they  were  employed, 
for  they  were  supposed  to  be  "  under  the  supervision  of 
their  parents."  The  result  was  that,  although  the  appren- 
tice system  was  discontinued,  other  children  came  to  work 
in  the  mills,  and  were  treated  almost  as  brutally,3  though  for- 
tunately they  were  not  entirely  in  the  hands  of  their  master. 
But  the  evils  of  this  system  of  child  labour  were  very  great 

1  Act42Geo.  III.,  c.  73. 

2  Alfred,  History  of  the  Factory  Movement,  i.  27. 

8  76.,  i.  ch.  iv.,  and  pp.  53,  79,  183,  278-306,  ii.  10. 


392  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

During  the  whole  of  the  period  of  1800  to  1820,  and  even 
to  1840,  the  results  of  their  sufferings  were  seen  in  the 
early  deaths  of  many  of  the  children,  and  in  the  crippled 
and  distorted  forms  of  the  majority  of  those  who  survived.1 
On  the  women  and  grown-up  girls  the  effects  of  long  hours 
and  wearisome  work  were  equally  disastrous.2  A  curious 
inversion  of  the  proper  order  of  things  was  seen  in  the 
domestic  economy  of  the  victims  of  this  cheap  labour  system, 
for  women  and  girls  were  superseding  men  in  manufacturing 
labour,  and,  in  consequence,  their  husbands  had  often  -  to 
attend,  in  a  shiftless,  slovenly  fashion,  to  those  household 
duties  which  mothers  and  daughters  hard  at  work  in  the 
factories  were  unable  to  fulfil.3  Worse  still,  mothers  and 
fathers  in  some  cases  lived  upon  the  killing  labour  of  their 
little  children,  by  letting  them  out  to  hire  to  manufacturers, 
who  found  them  cheaper  than  their  parents.  In  fact  there 
was,  as  one  investigator  expressed  it,  "  a  conspiracy  insen- 
sibly formed  between  the  masters  and  the  parents  to  tax 
them  with  a  degree  of  toil  beyond  their  strength."  * 

§  225.    Efforts  towards  Factory  Reform. 

Meantime,  however,  the  Act  of  1802  seems  to  have 
become,  even  as  regards  apprentices,  a  dead  letter.  White 
slaves  could  be  bought  and  sold  in  England  with  as  much 
impunity  as  in  the  West  Indies, — in  fact,  with  more,  for 
by  1815,  Wilberforce's  wishes  as  regards  trading  in  slaves 
had  long  since  become  law.  The  fact  that  such  sales  took 
place  is  attested  by  the  debate  in  the  Commons,  on  June 
6th,  1815,  introduced  by  Sir  Robert  Peel,  in  which  one 
speaker  (Homer)  described  the  sending  away  of  children  to 
distant  parishes,  and  gave  an  instance  in  which,  "  with  a 
bankrupt's  effects,  a  gang  of  these  children  had  been  put 

1  Cf.  evidence  quoted  in  Alfred,  u.  8.,  i.  190,  287,  260,  ii.  9. 

2  Cf.  evidence  in  Alfred,  u.  s.,  i.  181,  300. 

8  Cf.  facts  quoted  by  Engels,  Condition  of  the  Working  Classes  in  1844 
(English  edition,  1892),  pp.  144,  145. 

4  Assistant  Commissioner  Power,  in  the  famous  1833  Report.  Reports, 
1833,  xx.  604  ;  also,  cf.  Oastler's  speech  quoted  in  Alfred,  History  of  the 
Factory  Movement,  i.  228,  and  Sadler's  speech,  p.  158. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  393 

up  to  sale,  and  advertised  publicly  as  part  of  the  property.1 
A  still  more  atrocious  instance,"  he  continued,  "  had  been 
brought  before  the  court  of  King's  Bench  two  years  ago, 
when  a  number  of  these  boys,  apprenticed  by  a  parish  in 
London  to  one  manufacturer,  had  been  transferred  [i.e. 
sold]  to  another,  and  had  been  found  by  some  benevolent 
persons  in  a  state  of  absolute  famine."  2  Facts  like  these, 
even  though  negroes  were  not  concerned,  could  no  longer 
be  blinked,  and  at  length,  in  1816,  a  Select  Committee  of 
the  House  of  Commons  was  appointed  to  take  evidence 
upon  the  state  of  children  employed  in  the  manufactories 
of  the  United  Kingdom.  Terrible  evidence  of  overwork  was 
given  before  this  Committee,3  but  the  grasp  of  Mammon  was 
cruel  and  relentless ;  and  now  that  social  reformers  were  in 
earnest,  the  inevitable  opposition  of  capitalistic  greed  rose 
up  in  all  its  power  to  block  the  path  of  humanity.  The 
surest  block  was  the  barrier  of  delay.  Further  Com- 
missions were  asked  for  by  the  opponents  of  factory  reform  ; 
the  same  kind  of  evidence  as  before  was  repeated  in  1819 
before  a  Committee  of  the  Lords ; 4  and  when  at  last 
very  shame  demanded  that  something  should  be  done,  the 
ineffectual  Act,  59  George  III.,  c.  66,  was  passed.6  This 
Act,  when  originally  introduced,  was  meant  to  apply  to  all 
factories,  but  it  was  afterwards  limited  only  to  cotton 
factories,  so  that  it  had  only  a  very  partial  effect,  and  was 
even  then  frequently  evaded.6  And  in  any  case  the  worsted 
and  woollen  mills  were  not  even  touched. 

§  226.  Richard  Oastler. 

So  things  went  on  again  as  badly  as  ever  for  year  after 
year,   and    manufacturers    grew   rich,   while    children    and 

1  Quoted  in  Alfred's  (Samuel  Kydd)  History  of  the  Factory  Movement, 
i.  43.  8/6.,i.  43. 

8  For  the  nature  of  the  evidence,  cf.  History  of  the  Factory  Movement, 
VoLL.ch.  iv.  «/&.,  177. 

8  R.  W.  Cooke-Taylor  in  The  Factory  System  and  the  Factory  A<A»  (1894) 
remarks,  p.  61,  "It  was  generally  ignored  or  evaded." 

•  It  provided  (1)  nine  years  to  be  limit  of  age  for  child  employment. 
(2)  Twelve  hours'  day  for  those  under  sixteen  years.  (3)  Time  to  be 
allowed  for  meals.  (4)  Ceilings  and  walls  to  be  washed  with  quicklime 
twice  a  year. 


394  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

young  people  of  both  sexes  were  beaten  and  overworked  to 
make  their  profits ;  and  philanthropists  riding  home  late 
at  night  from  heated  meetings,  after  discussing  the  wrongs 
of  the  black  slaves,  looked  with  cheerful  and  ignorant 
complacency  at  the  great  factory  windows  blazing  with 
light,  and  accepted  them  as  signs  of  prosperity,  little 
heeding  or  little  knowing  the  misery  and  cruelty  that  pre- 
vailed within  their  walls.  It  was,  however,  one  of  these 
friends  of  the  negro,  and  one  who  had  often  had  such  a 
midnight  ride,  who  was  suddenly  aroused  to  the  fact  that 
actual  slavery  in  the  most  literal  sense  was  going  on  in 
England  while  he  was  agitating  for  its  abolition  abroad. 
Richard  Oastler l  was  the  man  whose  eyes  were  thus  opened, 
a  Yorkshireman  by  birth,  and  one  well  acquainted  with  the 
industries  of  the  busy  West  Riding.  He  was  once  in  1830 
staying  at  the  house  of  a  friend  who  lived  at  Horton  Hall, 
near  Bradford,  and  who  was  a  large  manufacturer.  As  Oastler 
was  talking  to  him  one  night  about  his  slavery  reforms,  his 
friend  John  Wood  remarked  to  him : 2  "  I  wonder  you 
have  never  turned  your  attention  to  the  factory  system." — 
"  Why  should  I  ?  "  replied  the  young  abolitionist,  "  I  have 
nothing  to  do  with  factories." — "  Perhaps  not,"  was  the 
answer,  "  but  you  are  very  enthusiastic  against  slavery  in 
the  West  Indies,  and  I  assure  you  that  there  are  cruelties 
daily  practised  in  our  mills  on  little  children,  which  I  am 
sure  if  you  knew  you  would  try  to  prevent."  And  then  he 
went  on  to  describe  to  his  astonished  hearer  the  horrors  of 
the  factories.  Even  in  his  own  mill  Wood  confessed  that 
little  children  were  worked  from  six  in  the  morning  till 
seven  at  night,  with  a  break  of  only  forty  minutes,  while 
in  many  other  mills  no  rest  at  all  was  allowed  ;  and  that 
various  cruel  devices  were  employed  to  goad  them  on  to 

1  He  was  born  in  1789,  and  had  succeeded  his  father  as  steward  to  Mr 
Thornhill  on  his  Yorkshire  estates,  living  at  Fixby  Hall,  near  Hudders- 
field.    It  is  curious  that  no  proper  biography  of  him  exists.    In  Palgrave's 
Dictionary  of  Political  Economy,  however,  I  have  given  a  short  summary 
of  the  main  facts  of  his  life ;  cf.  also  Taylor's  Biographia  Leodiensis,  pp. 
499-503  ;  Hodder's  Life  of  the.  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  i.  214-216,  304;  ii.  189. 
211  ;  iii.  249;  and  "Alfred's"  History  of  the  Factory  Movement,  passim. 
Oastler  died  in  1861. 

2  See  the  conversation  in  Alfred's  History,  i.  95-97. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  395 

renewed  labour.  They  were  fined,  beaten  with  sticks  and 
straps  and  whips  ;  and  the  girls  were  also  often  subjected 
to  shocking  indecencies.1 

§  227.  Factory  Agitation  in  Yorkshire.     For  and 

Against. 

Oastler,  when  once  he  saw  what  was  going  on  about  him 
in  his  own  country,  made  no  delay  in  entering  upon  a  war- 
fare that  was  to  last  for  many  a  weary  year,  and  bring  many 
a  trial  and  disaster.  The  very  next  day  2  he  wrote  a  long 
letter  to  the  great  Yorkshire  daily  paper,  the  Leeds  Mercury, 
in  which  he  took  for  his  text  the  old,  foolish,  and  utterly 
untrue  statement,  "  It  is  the  pride  of  Britain  that  a  slave 
cannot  exist  on  her  soil,"  and  proved  very  conclusively  that 
slavery  could  and  did  exist  in  a  most  dreadful  form.  He 
pointed  out  that  thousands  of  children,  both  male  and 
female,  from  six  to  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  chiefly  girls, 
were  compelled  to  labour  thirteen  to  sixteen  hours  a  day, 
under  the  lash  of  an  overseer,  in  the  mills  of  Bradford, 
Morpeth,  Halifax,  Huddersfield,  and  many  other  northern 
towns.  This  sudden  revelation  of  English  slavery  created  a 
remarkable  sensation,  but,  of  course,  called  forth  a  very 
powerful  opposition.  The  simplest  thing  was  to  deny  the 
existence  of  any  such  evils,  and  denials  accordingly  became 
remarkably  frequent.  A  keen  newspaper  correspondence 
arose,  chiefly  in  the  columns  of  the  Leeds  Mercury;  and  from 
this  controversy  Oastler  emerged  triumphant,  with  all  his 
facts  proved  over  and  over  again,  while  confirmation  of  his 
statements  began  to  pour  in  from  every  part  of  Yorkshire. 
Before  a  month  had  passed,  a  meeting  of  the  worsted 
spinners  of  Bradford  was  called  by  some  of  the  principal 
firms  in  that  town  (November  22nd),  in  order  to  promote 
legislation  on  the  subject,  and  a  petition  was  drawn  up  to 
be  forwarded  to  Parliament.  A  similar  agitation  now  arose 
in  Lancashire,  and  a  bill  was  laid  before  the  Commons  by 
Lord  Morpeth  to  reduce  the  hours  of  labour  and  raise  the 
limit  of  age  for  work  in  mills.8  Hope  seemed  to  be  dawn- 

1  See  the  conversation  in  Alfred's  History,  i.  96. 

*  Cf.  The  Leeds  Mercury :  Oastler'u  letter  ia  dated  September  29th,  1830. 

1  For  all  the  above,  see  Alfred's  History,  i.  104-107. 


396  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

ing  for  the  children  of  the  factories,  when  suddenly  the 
manufacturers  of  Halifax  and  district  struck  the  first  note 
of  opposition  in  a  counter  petition.1  They  set  forth  the 
"  unimpeachable  character  for  humanity  and  kindness " 
possessed  by  manufacturers  as  a  class ;  the  impossibility  of 
making  profits  if  hours  were  reduced  ;  the  overpowering 
force  of  foreign  competition  (almost  non-existent  then  as 
compared  with  to-day)  ;  the  general  hardships  of  a  manu- 
facturer's lot,  owing  to  taxation  and  other  difficulties ;  and 
finally,  "  the  pernicious  tendency  of  all  legislative  enact- 
ments upon  trade  and  manufactures,"  or,  in  other  words, 
the  necessity  of  following  the  golden  rule  of  laissez  faire. 

I  have  quoted  the  arguments  of  this  petition  because 
they  are  in  brief  a  summary  of  the  arguments  which  were 
then  employed,  are  now  employed,  and  probably  always 
will  be  employed  against  any  interference  between  master 
and  man.  In  this  case  the  law  had  only  been  invoked  to 
step  in  between  master  and  child ;  but  that  mattered  little  ; 
the  "liberty  of  the  subject"  and  "freedom  of  contract" 
were  questions  too  sacred  to  be  trifled  with.  It  was  indeed 
soon  seen  that  these  arguments  of  the  millowners  and  their 
friends  were  by  no  means  lacking  in  cogency,  for  the  pro- 
posed legislation  upon  the  working  of  factories  was  modified 
to  such  an  extent  as  to  make  it  almost  useless,  and,  in  any 
case,  the  measure  was  to  be  applied  to  cotton  mills  only.2 
Oastler  felt  that  the  day  was  lost,  and  said  as  much  in  a 
public  letter  to  the  Leeds  Intelligencer  of  October  20, 
1831,  a  letter  which  shows  cruel  disappointment  of  heart, 
indeed,  but  yet  is  as  full  as  ever  of  fire  and  hope  for  the 
future.8  Incidentally  it  is  curious  to  note,  from  a  passage 
in  this  letter,  that  the  Factory  Eeformers  of  that  day  were 
accused  of  being  opposed  to  the  abolition  of  negro  slavery, 
and  were  said  to  be  getting  up  a  factory  agitation  "in 
order  to  turn  the  attention  of  the  nation  away  from  West 
Indian  slavery."4  But  in  spite  of  calumny,  prejudice,  and 

1  Alfred,  History,  i.  109  sqq. 

2  So  the  1  and  2  William  IV.,  c.  39  ;  and  c/.  Taylor,  Factory  System  and 
Factory  Acts,  p.  63. 

8  See  it  almost  in  full  in  Alfred's  History,  i.  118. 
4  76.,  i.  119. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  397 

the  savage  opposition  of  vested  interests,  the  words  of 
Richard  Oastler  rang  forth  undauntedly  to  the  working 
classes  of  Yorkshire  :  "  Let  no  promises  of  support  from 
any  quarter  sink  you  to  inactivity.  Consider  that  you 
must  manage  this  cause  yourselves.  Collect  information 
and  publish  facts.  Let  your  politics  be  :  Ten  hours  a  day, 
and  a  time  book." l 

§  228.    Ten  Hours'  Day  and  Mr  Sadler. 

At  this  time  Oastler  was  living  at  Fixby  Hall,  Hudders- 
field,  and  from  his  position  as  a  Tory  and  a  Churchman,  as 
he  describes  himself,  could  not  at  first  see  his  way  to  working 
actively  among  the  mill  hands,  who  were  mostly  "  Radicals 
and  Dissenters."  But  now  he  saw  that  no  barriers  of  class, 
or  creed,  or  politics  could  be  allowed  to  interfere  in  this 
cause,  and  from  henceforth  decided  to  throw  in  his  lot  with 
the  factory  workers,  come  what  might.  He  was  assisted, 
from  the  political  side,  by  men  like  J.  Hobhouse  and  M.  T. 
Sadler,  both  Members  of  Parliament,  warmly  attached  to 
his  cause,  and  it  was  decided  that  Sadler  should  lead  the 
question  in  the  House  of  Commons.  It  would  be  tedious  to 
go  through  all  the  phases  of  the  great  Ten  Hours'  Agitation 
in  and  out  of  Parliament,2  and  therefore  it  must  suffice  to 
mention  that  Sadler  at  length  introduced  a  Ten  Hours' 
Bill  into  the  Commons  late  in  1831,  and  moved  its  second 
reading  in  March  1832,  in  a  speech3  of  eminent  moderation 
and  judgment.  He  pointed  out  the  existence  of  child- 
slavery  in  England,  and  the  causes  of  it,  mainly  in  the 
poverty,  but  partly  in  the  inducements  to  laziness,  of  the 
parents.  Many  parents  were  unable  to  get  work  them- 
selves, and  thus  were  compelled  to  hire  out  their  children 
to  the  brutalities  and  hardships  of  factory  work.  Some 
parents,  demoralised  by  the  old  Poor  Law,  selfish  and 
brutalised  by  custom,  purchased  idleness  for  themselves  at 
the  cost  of  their  children's  health  and  strength.  In  some 

1  Alfred's  History,  i.  122. 
*  See  Alfred's  History,  i.  125  sqq. 

1  Cf.  Taylor,  Factory  System  and  Factory  Acts  (1894),  p.  64.    The  npeech 
is  given  in  full  in  Alfred's  History,  i.  151  tqq. 


398  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

districts,  so  great  was  the  demand  for  children's  labour,  that 
an  indispensable  condition  of  marriage  among  the  working 
classes  was  the  certainty  of  offspring,1  whose  wages — begin- 
ning at  six  years  old — might  keep  their  inhuman  fathers 
and  mothers  in  idleness.  Well  might  Sadler  exclaim : 2 
"  Our  ancestors  could  not  have  supposed  it  possible — 
posterity  will  not  believe  it  true — that  a  generation  of 
Englishmen  could  exist,  or  had  existed,  that  would  work 
lisping  infancy  of  a  few  summers  old,  regardless  alike  of  its 
smiles  or  tears,  and  unmoved  by  its  unresisting  weakness, 
twelve,  thirteen,  fourteen,  sixteen  hours  a  day,  and  through 
the  weary  night  also,  till,  in  the  dewy  morn  of  existence, 
the  bud  of  youth  was  faded  and  fell  ere  it  was  unfolded." 
But,  to  our  eternal  disgrace  as  a  nation,  that  generation  of 
Englishmen  existed,  and  Mr  Sadler  told  the  House,  detail 
by  detail,  of  the  evils  and  outrages  of  the  whole  abominable 
system.  Excessive  hours,  low  wages,  immorality,  ill-health, 
— all  were  enumerated,  and  then  he  continued :  "  Then,  in 
order  to  keep  them  awake,  to  stimulate  their  exertions, 
means  are  made  use  of  to  which  I  shall  now  advert,  as  a 
last  instance  of  the  degradation  to  which  this  system  has 
reduced  the  manufacturing  operatives  of  this  country. 
Children  are  beaten  with  thongs,  prepared  for  the  purpose. 
Yes,  the  females  of  this  country,  no  matter  whether  children 
or  grown  up — and  I  hardly  know  which  is  the  more  dis- 
gusting outrage — are  beaten,  beaten  in  your  free  market  of 
labour  as  you  term  it,  like  slaves.  The  poor  wretch  is 
flogged  before  its  companions — flogged,  I  say,  like  a  dog, 
by  the  tyrant  overlooker.  We  speak  with  execration  of  the 
cartwhip  of  the  West  Indies,  but  let  us  see  this  night  an 
equal  feeling  rise  against  the  factory  thong  in  England."  3 

§  229.   The  Evidence  of  Facts. 

Of  course,  it  is  needless  to  say  that  such  an  equal  feeling 

did  not  arise,  not,  that  is,  with  anything  like  the  cry  of 

horror  that  arose  over  negro  slavery.      The  hours  of  black 

slaves'  labour  in  our  colonies  were  at  that  very  time  carefully 

1  Alfred's  History,  i.  158.  2  /&.,  i.  161.  8  Ib.,  i.  183. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  399 

limited  by  law 1  to  nine  per  day  for  adults,  and  six  for 
young  persons  and  children,  while  night  work  was  simply 
prohibited.  But  for  white  slaves  no  limit  was  to  be  fixed, 
nor  was  the  arm  of  the  law  to  interfere.  Though  Sadler's 
bill  was  read  a  second  time,  and  was  referred  to  a  com- 
mittee, nothing  much  was  done.  But  the  evidence  given 
before  this  committee  at  length  produced  some  effect. 
Oastler's  tactics  of  publishing  the  facts  had  now  been  taken 
up  unwittingly  by  Parliament  itself,  and  the  facts  given 
before  Sadler's  committee  2  were  terrible  enough  to  cause  a 
shudder  of  shame  to  run  through  the  country.  Yet,  after 
all,  the  shame  was  only  felt  by  a  minority ;  the  nation,  as  a 
whole,  was  not  yet  touched.  And  very  soon  Mr  Sadler  lost 
his  seat 3  in  the  House  of  Commons,  in  the  election  after 
the  great  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  and  the  factory  hands  were 
thus  left  without  a  Parliamentary  advocate  of  any  influence. 
But  now  a  new  leader  appeared  in  the  person  of  Lord 
Ashley,  afterwards  Earl  Shaftesbury,  who  undertook  to 
bring  forward  once  more  the  Ten  Hours'  Bill.  Lord 
Ashley's  life  may  be  read  elsewhere,4  but  we  may  pause  to 
look,  though  only  for  a  moment,  at  the  revelations  of 
slavery  brought  to  light  by  the  Sadler  Committee.5 

In  the  first  place  the  Committee  received  the  satisfactory 
assurance  from  one  witness  that  the  youngest  age  at  which 
children  were  employed  was  never  under  five.6  But  from 
five  years  onwards  it  was  the  custom  to  employ  them,  from 
about  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  till  as  late  as  ten  o'clock 
at  night,7  during  the  whole  of  which  time  they  were  on 
their  feet,  with  a  short  interval  for  dinner.8  The  children 
were  generally  cruelly  treated,  so  cruelly  that  they  dare  not, 
for  their  lives,  be  too  late  at  their  work  in  a  morning.9 
One  witness  stated  that  he  had  seen  children,  whose  work 
it  was  to  throw  a  bunch  of  ten  or  twelve  cord  ings  across 
their  hand  and  take  them  off,  one  at  a  time,  so  weary  as 

1  By  the  Orders  in  Council  of  November  2,  1831. 

7  Cf.  Taylor,  Factory  System  and  Factory  Acts,  p.  66.  »  /&.,  p.  65. 
4  See  the  excellent  Ltfe,  in  3  vols.,  by  Mr  Hodder. 

8  See  ch.  xii.  of  Alfred's  History,  Vol.  I. 

•76.  i.  275.  T/6.  i.  276. 

8 Ib.  i.  277  (quotation  from  evidence).  '/ft.  i-  '-'Ts 


400  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

not  to  know  whether  they  were  at  work  or  not,  and  going 
through  the  mechanical  actions  without  anything  in  their 
hands.1  When  they  made  mistakes  in  this  state  of  fatigue 
they  were  severely  beaten  by  the  spinner  whom  they  helped 
or  by  the  overlooker.  Several  cases  of  deaths,  through 
such  beating  and  blows,  were  given  in  evidence.  "  The 
children  were  incapable  of  performing  their  day's  labour 
well  towards  the  end  of  the  day ;  their  fate  was  to  be 
awoke  by  being  beaten,  and  to  be  kept  awake  by  the  same 
method."2  "At  a  mill  in  Duntruin,"  continued  the  same 
man,  who  gave  this  evidence,3  "they  were  kept  on  the 
premises  by  being  locked  up  while  at  work,  they  were 
locked  up  in  the  bothies  (sleeping-huts)  at  night ;  they 
were  guarded  to  their  work  and  guarded  back  again. 
There  was  one  bothy  for  the  boys,  but  that  did  not  hold 
them  all,  so  there  were  some  of  them  put  into  the  other 
bothy  along  with  the  girls."  Sometimes  the  elder  children 
tried  to  escape  from  such  miserable  and  degraded  surround- 
ings. When  caught,  as  they  generally  were,  they  were 
inhumanly  flogged,  or  sent  to  gaol  for  breaking  their 
contracts.4  A  case  is  given  of  a  young  woman  who  was 
thus  put  in  prison  for  a  year,  "  brought  back  after  a  twelve- 
month and  worked  for  her  meat ;  and  she  had  to  pay  the 
expenses  that  were  incurred.  So  she  worked  two  years  for 
nothing,  to  indemnify  her  master  for  the  loss  of  her  time."  6 

§   230.  English  Slavery. 

Here,  again,  is  the  story  of  a  Huddersfield  lad  who  was 
lame.6  He  lived  a  good  mile  from  the  mill,  and  it  was 
painful  for  him  to  move,  "so  my  brother  and  sister  used, 
out  of  kindness,  to  take  me  under  each  arm,  and  run  with 
me  to  the  mill,  and  my  legs  dragged  on  the  ground  in  con- 
sequence of  the  pain ;  I  could  not  walk,  and  if  we  were 
five  minutes  too  late,  the  overlooker  would  take  a  strap  and 
beat  us  till  we  were  black  and  blue."  The  worst  of  it  was 

1  Alfred's  History,  Vol.  I.  i.  278. 

2  Evidence  of  James  Pater  son,  quoted  ib. ,  i.  283. 

3  Ib.,  i.  283,  284.  4  Ib.,  i.  284.  5  Ib.,  i.  284, 
6  Evidence  of  Joseph  Habergam,  ib.,  i.  286. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  401 

that  the  masters  in  many  mills  encouraged  the  overlookers 
in  this  kind  of  brutality.  An  eye-witness  l  relates  :  "  I  have 
seen  them,  when  the  master  has  been  standing  at  one  end 
of  the  room  with  the  overlookers  speaking  to  him,  and  he 
has  said  '  look  at  those  two  girls  talking,'  and  has  run  and 
beat  them  the  same  as  they  beat  soldiers  in  the  barrack- 
yard  for  deserting."  A  Leeds  girl,2  who  began  her  mill- 
work  at  six  years  old,  and  toiled  then  from  five  in  the 
morning  till  nine  at  night,  gives  similar  evidence  :  "  When 
the  doffers  flagged  a  little  or  were  too  late,  they  were 
strapped,  and  those  who  were  last  in  doffing  were  constantly 
strapped,  girls  as  well  as  boys.  I  have  been  strapped 
severely,  and  have  been  hurt  by  the  strap  excessively. 
Sometimes  the  overlooker  got  a  chain  and  chained  the 
girls,  and  strapped  them  all  down  the  room,  The  girls 
have  many  times  had  black  marks  upon  their  skin."  8  This 
was  in  a  Yorkshire  factory,  and  not  upon  a  West  Indian 
plantation ;  but  the  slaves  were  white.  That  the  dreadful 
exertions,  produced  by  this  forced  labour,  often  caused 
death  from  exhaustion  among  children  is  obvious.  A 
Keighley  overseer,  in  giving  evidence,  told  the  story  *  of  a 
man  who  came  to  him,  saying  :  "  My  little  girl  is  dead." 
I  asked,  "  When  did  she  die  ? "  and  he  said  :  "  In  the 
night,  and  what  breaks  my  heart  is  this ;  she  went  to 
the  mill  in  the  morning,  but  she  was  not  able  to  do  her 
work.  A  little  boy  said  he  would  help  her  if  she  would 
give  him  a  halfpenny  on  Saturday,  but  at  night  when  the 
child  went  home,  perhaps  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  she 
fell  down  several  times  on  the  road  through  exhaustion,  till 
at  length  she  reached  her  door  with  difficulty.  She  never 
spoke  audibly  afterwards  ;  she  died  in  the  night."  Tragedies 
like  this,  told  in  such  simple,  common-place  words,  hap- 
pened in  not  a  few  homes ;  or  instead  of  death,  a  maimed 
and  miserable  life  of  ill-health  and  disease  was  slowly 
dragged  along  till  the  grave  gave  a  merciful  release.  One 
might  give  a  long  list  of  such  cases,  and  of  various  forms 

1  Same  evidence,  i.  287,  288. 

»  Evidence  of  Elizabeth  Bentley ,  ib. ,  i.  297.  '  /&. ,  i.  298,  299. 

4  Evidence  of  Gillett  Sharpe,  16.,  i.  302. 

2  C 


402  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

of  torture  inflicted  on  children  not  daring  to  resist,  but  in 
this  tender  age  one  is  not  allowed  to  harrow  even  the 
feelings  of  a  reader.  Yet  we  may  perhaps  be  allowed  to 
quote  one  more  example  from  a  speech  of  Richard  Oastler's1: 
"  I  will  not  picture  fiction  to  you,"  this  brave  reformer 
said,  in  the  early  days  of  the  factory  movement,  "  but  I  will 
tell  you  what  I  have  seen.  Take  a  little  female  captive, 
six  or  seven  years  old ;  she  shall  rise  from  her  bed  at  four 
in  the  morning  of  a  cold  winter  day,  but  before  she  rises 
she  wakes  perhaps  half-a-dozen  times,  and  says,  Father,  is 
it  time  ?  Father,  is  it  time  ?  And  at  last,  when  she  gets 
up  and  puts  her  little  bits  of  rags  upon  her  weary  limbs — 
weary  yet  with  the  last  day's  work — she  leaves  her  parents 
in  their  bed,  for  their  labour  (if  they  have  any)  is  not 
required  so  early.  She  trudges  alone  through  rain  and 
snow,  and  mire  and  darkness,  to  the  mill,  and  there  for 
13,  14,  16,  17,  or  even  1.8  hours  is  she  obliged  to  work 
with  only  thirty  minutes'  interval  for  meals  and  play. 
Homeward  again  at  night  she  would  go,  when  she  was  able, 
but  many  a  time  she  hid  herself  in  the  wool  in  the  mill,  as 
she  had  not  strength  to  go.  And  if  she  were  one  moment 
behind  the  appointed  time ;  if  the  bell  had  ceased  to  ring 
when  she  arrived  with  trembling,  shivering,  weary  limbs  at 
the  factory  door,  there  stood  a  monster  in  human  form,  and 
as  she  passed  he  lashed  her.  This,"  he  continued,  holding 
up  an  overlooker's  strap,  "  is  no  fiction.  It  was  hard  at 
work  in  this  town  last  week.  The  girl  I  am  speaking  of 
died  ;  but  she  dragged  on  that  dreadful  existence  for  several 
years." 

Such  was  the  terrible  nature  of  the  evidence  taken  before 
the  Sadler  Committee  of  1833  ;  but  even  yet  it  was  found 
impossible,  for  various  reasons,  to  get  a  Bill  passed.2  The 
Government  appointed  yet  another  Committee,  which, 
however,  reported  so  strongly  in  favour  of  legislation,  that 
at  length  something  had  to  be  done.  The  result  was  the 
famous  Act  of  1833. 

1  Speech  at  Huddersfield,  Dec.  26,  1831,  quoted  in  Alfred's  History,  i.  226 
*  Cf.  Taylor,  Factory  System  and  Factory  Acts  (1894),  p.  74, 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  403 

§  231.   The  Various  Factory  Acts. 

But  to  gain  a  complete  survey  of  Factory  Legislation  we 
must  go  back  a  few  years.  After  the  Act  of  1802,  already 
referred  to,  for  improving  the  condition  of  apprentices,  an 
Act l  for  the  regulation  of  work  in  cotton  mills  was  passed 
in  1819,  allowing  no  child  to  be  admitted  into  a  factory 
before  the  age  of  nine,  and  placing  1 2  hours  a  day  as  the 
limit  of  work  for  those  between  the  ages  of  nine  and 
sixteen.  The  day  was  really  one  of  13  J  or  14  hours, 
because  no  meal-times  were  included  in  the  working  day. 
Then,  again,  in  1831  an  Act2  was  passed  forbidding  night- 
work  in  factories  for  persons  between  nine  and  twenty-one 
years  of  age,  while  the  working  day  for  persons  under 
eighteen  was  to  be  12  hours  a  day,  and  9  hours  on  Satur- 
days. But  this  legislation  only  applied  to  cotton  factories ; 
those  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  wool  were  quite  un- 
touched, and  matters  there  were  as  bad  as  ever.  But  a 
spirit  of  agitation  was  fortunately  abroad  in  the  country. 
These  were  the  days  of  the  Reform  Bill  and  of  the  rise  of 
Trades  Unions.  The  workmen  cried  out  for  the  restriction 
of  non-adult  labour  to  10  hours  a  day,  and  the  Conserva- 
tive party,3  who  were  chiefly  interested  in  the  land  and  not 
in  the  mills,  supported  them  readily  against  the  manu- 
facturers, who  were  mainly  Liberals  and  Radicals.  The 
long  struggle  against  factory  slavery  was  at  last  successful, 
and  one  of  the  most  important  Acts  to  prevent  it  was 
passed.  The  Act4  of  1833,  introduced  by  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury,  prohibited  night-work  to  persons  under  eighteen  in 
both  cotton,  wool,  and  other  factories ;  children  from  nine 
to  thirteen  years  of  age  were  not  to  work  more  than  48 
hours  a  week,  and  young  persons  from  thirteen  to  eighteen 
years  were  to  work  only  68  hours.  Provision  was  also 
made  for  the  children's  attendance  at  school,  and  for  the 
appointment  of  factory  inspectors.  Children  under  nine 
years  of  age  were  not  to  be  employed  at  alL  These  re- 
strictions in  the  employment  of  children  led  to  a  great 

1  The  59  Geo.  III.,  c.  66.  *  The  1  and  2  William  IV.,  o.  39. 

»  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  pp.  208,  209,  215. 
«  The  3  and  4  William  IV.,  c.  103. 


404  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

increase  in  the  use  of  improved  machinery  to  make  up  for 
the  loss  of  their  labour,  and  it  is  probable  that  they 
accelerated  the  use  of  steam  instead  of  water  power 
in  the  smaller  and  more  old-fashioned  mills,  where  also 
the  worst  abuses  in  children's  employment  had  chiefly 
prevailed.1  Then,  after  one  or  two  minor  Acts,2  the 
famous  Ten  Hours'  Bill3  was  passed  in  1847,  which 
reduced  the  labour  of  women  and  young  persons  to  10 
hours  a  day,  the  legal  day  being  between  5.30  A.M.  and 
8.30  P.M.  Manufacturers  tried  to  avoid  the  provisions  of 
this  Bill  by  working  persons  thus  protected  in  relays,  and 
making  elaborate  regulations  to  nullify  the  law,4  but  this 
was  stopped  by  the  fixing  of  a  uniform  working  day  in 
1850,  so  that  young  persons  and  women  could  only  work 
between  the  hours  of  6  A.M.  and  6  P.M.,  and  on  Satur- 
days only  till  2  P.M.5  Since  the  passing  of  these  Acts 
many  much-needed  extensions  of  their  provisions  to  other 
industries  have  been  made,  especially0  in  1864,  and  in 
1874  the  minimum  age  at  which  a  child  could  be  admitted 
to  a  factory  was  fixed  at  ten  years.7  The  limitation  of  the 
labour  of  women  and  young  persons  necessarily  involved 
the  limitation  of  men's  labour,  because  their  work  could 
not  be  done  without  female  aid.8  Thus  the  Ten  Hours' 
Day  fortunately  became  universal  in  factories. 

§  232.   How  these  Acts  were  Passed. 

It  is  curious  to  notice  how  these  Acts  were  passed.  They 
all  showed  the  steady  advance  of  the  principle  of  State 
interference  with  labour,  a  doctrine  most  distasteful  to  the 
old  Ricardian  school  of  economists,  even  when  that  inter- 
ference was  made  in  the  interests  of  the  physical  and  moral 
well-being,  not  only  of  the  industrial  classes,  but  of  the 
community  at  large.  Hence  the  economists  of  the  day 

1  Cf.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  pp.  626,  627. 

2  The  7  Victoria,  c.   15 ;  8  and  9  Vic.,  c.  29;  and  others;  see  Taylor, 
Factory  System  and  Factory  Acts  (1894),  ch.  iv. 

*  The  10  Vic.,  c.  29,  and  c/.  Taylor,  ib.,  pp.  88,  89. 

*  Cf.  Taylor,  u.  s.,  pp.  89  and  78.  5  The  13  and  14  Victoria,  c.  54. 

6  By  the  27  and  28  Victoria,  c.  38 ;  c/.  Taylor,  u.  «.,  p.  95. 

7  The  37  and  38  Victoria,  c.  44.  8  Cf.  Taylor,  Factory  Acts,  p.  107. 


THE  FACTORY  SYSTEM  405 

aided  the  manufacturers  in  opposing  these  Acts  to  the 
utmost  of  their  power,  and  the  laws  passed  were  due  to  the 
action  of  the  Tories  and  landowners.1  Lord  Shaftesbury, 
Fielden,  Oastler,  and  Sadler  were  all  Tories,  though  they 
were  accused  of  being  Socialists.  They  were  supported  by 
the  landed  gentry,  partly  out  of  genuine  sympathy  with  the 
oppressed,  and  partly  out  of  opposition  to  the  rival  manufac- 
turing interest.2  But  the  millowners  had  their  revenge 
afterwards  when  they  helped  to  repeal  the  Corn  Laws,  in 
spite  of  the  protest  of  the  landlords,  who  did  not  mind  the 
workmen  having  shorter  hours  at  other  people's  expense, 
but  objected  to  their  having  cheap  bread  at  their  own.  It 
has  been  remarked  by  an  economist,8  who  does  not  hesitate 
to  point  out  the  virtues  as  well  as  the  vices  of  the  land- 
owners, that,  where  their  own  interests  were  not  touched, 
they  tried  to  use  their  power  for  the  good  of  the  people. 
The  remark  is  so  true  that  it  is  almost  a  truism.  Most 
men  are  benevolent  as  long  as  benevolence  costs  them 
nothing.  The  working  classes,  however,  seem  to  have  a 
suspicion  that  each  political  party  is  their  friend  only  in  so 
far  as  they  can  injure  their  opponents,  or  at  least  do  no 
harm  to  themselves.  The  Manchester  School  of  Radical 
Economists  bitterly  opposed  the  Factory  Acts,  and  John 
Bright  especially  distinguished  himself  (February  10,  1847) 
by  his  violent  denunciation  of  the  Ten  Hours'  Bill,  which  he 
characterised  as  "  one  of  the  worst  measures  ever  passed  in 
the  shape  of  an  Act  of  the  legislature."4  But  when  we 
look  back  upon  the  degradation  and  oppression  from  which 
the  industrial  classes  were  rescued  by  this  agitation,  we  can 
understand  why  Arnold  Toynbee  said  so  earnestly :  "  I 
tremble  to  think  what  this  country  would  have  been  but 
for  the  Factory  Acts."  5  They  form  one  of  the  most  inter- 
esting pages  in  the  history  of  industry,  for  they  show  how 
fearful  may  be  the  results  of  a  purely  capitalist  and  com- 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  214.  *  Ib, 

*  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution  (Are  Radicals  Socialists  f),  p.  215. 

4  As  John  Bright  was  always  looked  upon  as  "  the  people's  friend,"  it 
may  be  well  to  observe  that  this  extraordinary  utterance  is  to  be  found  in 
the  records  of  Hansard,  Third  Series,  Volume  LXXXIX.,  p.  1148. 

*  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  215. 


406  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

petitive  industrial  system,  unless  the  wage-earners  are  m  a 
position  to  place  an  effectual  check  upon  the  greed  of  an 
unscrupulous  employer.  It  may  be  thought  that  too  large 
a  space  has  been  devoted  to  them  in  this  chapter,  but  when 
we  consider  the  enormous  and  profound  influence  which  the 
Factory  System  has  had  upon  the  life  of  the  nation,  it  must 
be  acknowledged  that  no  outline  of  industrial  history  would 
be  at  all  adequate  that  does  not  include  a  very  marked 
reference  both  to  the  system  itself  and  the  Acts  which  now 
regulate  it.  The  factory  has  so  completely  revolutionised 
the  methods  of  industry  in  the  last  hundred  years,  and  has 
thereby  so  completely  altered  the  social  and  industrial  life  of 
the  majority  of  the  workers  in  this  nation,  that  it  is  practically 
impossible  to  overestimate  its  importance  as  a  feature  in 
the  national  life.  How  far  it  has  operated  for  good  or  for 
ill  must  be  left  to  the  historians  of  the  future ;  but  no  one 
who  has  lived  for  any  length  of  time  (as  the  writer  has 
done)  amid  the  centres  of  a  large  manufacturing  population, 
can  fail  to  regard  with  considerable  uneasiness  the  peculiar 
developments  of  life  and  character  which  this  system  has 
called  forth.  It  has  been  acutely,  if  somewhat  gloomily, 
remarked  l  that  human  progress  is  after  all  only  a  surplus 
of  advantages  over  disadvantages,  and  that  being  so,  one 
must  attempt  to  regard  the  various  disquieting  features  of 
the  Industrial  Revolution  with  philosophic  equanimity.  Its 
advantages  have  been  great,  but  its  drawbacks  are  great 
also,  and  the  greatest  drawback  of  all  is  probably  to  be 
found  in  the  concentration  of  population  in  large  towns, 
where  the  mill  hand  spends  his  life  amid  surroundings  of 
repulsive  ugliness,  and  engaged  in  an  occupation  of  weari- 
some monotony.  The  fact  that  he  has  grown  to  like  both 
his  occupation  and  his  surroundings  is  possibly  a  matter  for 
even  greater  concern.  But  whatever  we  may  think  of  the 
effects  of  the  factory  system,  they  form  a  striking  example 
of  the  truth  that  the  history  of  mankind  is  to  be  found 
written  in  the  history  of  its  tools,  for  there  are  few  factors 
in  modern  English  history  more  important  than  the  inven- 
tions of  the  Industrial  Revolution. 

1  Lecky,  History  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  vi.  220. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THE    CONDITION    OF   THE    WORKING    CLASSES 

§   233.   Disastrous  Effects  of  the  New  Industrial  System. 

WE  have  already  seen,  in  various  preceding  chapters,  that 
the  condition  of  the  labourers  deteriorated  from  the  time  of 
Elizabeth  onwards,  but  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  had  been  materially  improved  owing  to  the 
increase  of  wealth  from  the  new  agriculture  and  to  the 
general  growth  of  foreign  trade.  But  then  came  the  great 
Continental  wars  and  the  Industrial  Revolution,  and  it  is  a 
sad  but  significant  fact  that,  although  the  total  wealth  of  the 
nation  was  vastly  increased  at  the  end  of  last  century  and  the 
beginning  of  this,  little  of  that  wealth  came  into  the  hands 
of  the  labourers,  but  went  almost  entirely  into  the  hands  of 
the  great  landlords  and  new  capitalist  manufacturers,  or 
was  spent  in  the  enormous  expenses  of  foreign  war.1  We 
saw,  too,  that  the  labourer  felt  far  more  severely  than  any 
one  else  the  burden  of  this  war,  for  taxes  had  been  imposed 
on  almost  every  article  of  consumption,2  while  at  the  same 
time  the  price  of  wheat  had  risen  enormously.8  Moreover, 
labour  was  now  more  than  ever  dependent  on  capital,  and 
the  individual  labourer  was  thoroughly  under  the  heel  of 
his  employer.  This  was  due  to  the  new  conditions  of 
labour,  both  in  agriculture  and  manufactures,  that  arose 
after  the  Industrial  and  Agricultural  Revolution,  and  to 
the  extinction  of  bye-industries.4  The  workman  was  now 
practically  compelled  to  take  what  his  employer  offered 
him,  either  in  the  factory  or  the  farm ;  for,  as  a  mill-hand, 
he  had  nothing  to  fall  back  upon  except  the  work  offered 
at  the  mill,  while  for  the  agricultural  labourer  the  increase 

1  Above,  p.  373.  *  Above,  #>.;  <•/.  also  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  489. 

*  Above,  p.  375.  4  Above,  p.  380. 

40; 


408  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

of  enclosures,  both  of  the  common  fields  and  the  waste,  had 
deprived  him  of  the  resources  which  he  formerly  possessed.1 
Few  labourers  had  now  a  plot  of  ground  to  cultivate,  or  any 
rights  to  a  common  where  they  could  get  fuel  for  themselves 
and  pasture  for  their  cattle.  The  Assessment  of  Wages  by 
the  justices  had  indeed  become  inoperative,  for  it  seems  to 
have  practically  died  out  in  the  south  of  England  at  the 
close  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  in  the  north  at  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth.2  But  the  low  rates  of  pay 
which  had  been  fixed  thereby  had  become  almost  tradi- 
tional,3 and  from  a  variety  of  causes,  already  alluded  to, 
pauperism  was  growing  with  alarming  rapidity.  Moreover, 
it  was  impossible  for  the  labourer  to  improve  his  position 
by  agitating  for  higher  wages,  for  all  combination  in  the 
form  now  known  as  Trades  Unions  was  suppressed,  and  his 
condition  sank  to  the  lowest  depth  of  poverty  and  degrada- 
tion. 

§   234.   The  Allowance  System,  of  Relief. 

This  state  of  things  was  aggravated  by  various  misfor- 
tunes, among  which  the  most  prominent  was  the  rise  in 
the  price  of  food.  At  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
there  had  been  a  succession  of  bad  harvests,  and  the  price 
of  wheat,  for  the  four  years  ending  1699,  was  between  6  4s. 
and  7 Is.  a  quarter,4  or  more  than  double  the  average6  of 
the  four  years  ending  in  1691.  This  high  price  was 
maintained  till  1710,  when  there  was  a  considerable  fall,6 
and  the  price  of  wheat  continued,  on  the  whole,  fairly  low 
till  about  1751.  But  after  that,  and  especially  from  1765, 
the  seasons  were  most  unsatisfactory,  harvests  were  poor, 
and  the  price  of  wheat  rose  enormously.7 

The  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  marked 
by  almost  chronic  scarcity,8  and  after  1790  wheat  was 
rarely  below  50s.  a  quarter,  and  often  double  that  price, 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  101. 

2  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,  p.  43.  8  Ib. 
4  Prothero,  English  Farming,  App.  I.  (p.  244). 

6  Cf.  figures  in  Prothero,  u.  s. 

6  The  prices  were,  in  1710,  78s.  aqr.  ;  in  1714,  50s.  ;  in  1720,  only  37s. 

7Tooke,  History  of  Price*,  i.  66,  82,  and  i.,  ch.  iii.  generally.  8  Ib. 


CONDITION   OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    409 

as  it  was  after  the  deficient  harvest  of  1795,  when  the 
price  was  108s.  a  quarter.1  The  famine  was  enhanced  by 
the  restrictions  of  the  Corn  Laws.  Meanwhile,  population 
was  growing  with  portentous  and  almost  inexplicable 
rapidity.  The  factories  employed  large  numbers  of  hands, 
but  these  were  chiefly  children  whose  parents  were  often 
compelled  to  live  upon  the  labour  of  their  little  ones  ; 2  and 
the  introduction  of  machinery  had  naturally  caused  a 
tremendous  dislocation  in  industry,  which  could  not  be 
expected  to  right  itself  immediately.8  Poverty  was  so 
widespread  that,  in  May  1795,  the  Berkshire  justices, 
in  a  now  famous  meeting  at  Speenhamland,  near  Newbury,4 
declared  the  old  quarter  sessions  assessment  of  wages  unsuit- 
able, besought  employers  to  give  rates  more  in  proportion  to 
the  cost  of  living,  but  added  that,  if  employers  refused  to  do 
this,  they  would  make  an  allowance  to  every  poor  family  in 
accordance  with  its  numbers.  This  is  the  celebrated  "  Speen- 
hamland Act  of  Parliament,"  which  never  received  the  sanc- 
tion of  law,  but  was  immediately  followed  in  many  counties, 
and  obeyed  much  more  cheerfully  than  is  sometimes  the  case 
with  the  Acts  of  the  Parliament  at  Westminster.6  It  is, 
therefore,  worth  while  to  notice  the  wording  of  the  resolutions 
which  the  Berkshire  Justices  passed,  They  resolved  (1)  that 
the  present  state  of  the  poor  does  require  further  assistance 
than  has  generally  been  given  them  ;  (2)  that  it  is  not 
expedient  for  the  magistrates  to  grant  that  assistance  by 
regulating  the  wages  of  day-labourers,  according  to  the 
directions  of  the  Statutes  of  the  5th  Elizabeth  and  1st 
James  ;  but  the  magistrates  very  earnestly  recommend  to 
the  farmers  and  others  throughout  the  county  to  increase 
the  pay  of  their  labourers  in  proportion  to  the  present  price 
of  provisions  ;  and,  agreeable  thereto,  the  magistrates  now 
present  have  unanimously  resolved  that  they  will,  in  their 
several  divisions,  make  the  following  calculations  and  allow- 
ances for  the  relief  of  all  poor  and  industrious  men  and 

1  For  prices  (average)  see  Prothero,  English  Farming,  App.  I.  (p.  244)  and 
for  1795  and  1796  specially,  Tooke,  Prices,  i.  182,  187. 

2  Above,  p.  397. 

»  Of.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  485.  *  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  p.  85. 

»/&.,.  66. 


410  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

their  families,  who,  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  justices  of 
their  parish,  shall  endeavour  (as  far  as  they  can)  for  their 
own  support  and  maintenance — that  is  to  say,  when  the 
gallon  loaf  of  seconds  flour,  weighing  8  Ibs.  11  oz.,  shall 
cost  Is.,  then  every  poor  and  industrious  man  shall  have  for 
his  own  support  3s.  weekly,  either  procured  by  his  own  or 
his  family's  labour,  or  an  allowance  from  the  poor  rates  ; 
and  for  the  support  of  his  wife  and  every  other  member  of 
the  family,  Is.  6d.  When  the  gallon  loaf  shall  cost  Is.  6d., 
then  he  shall  have  4s.  weekly  for  his  own  support,  and 
Is.  lOd.  for  the  support  of  every  other  of  his  family.  And 
so,  in  proportion,  as  the  price  of  bread  rises  or  falls,  that  is 
to  say,  3d.  to  the  man  and  Id.  to  every  other  of  his  family 
on  every  Id.  which  the  loaf  rises  above  Is."  l 

§  235.   The  Growtli  of  Pauperism  and  the  old 
Poor  Law. 

Such  were  the  celebrated  Speenhamland  resolutions. 
The  fact  that  the  country  justices  felt  compelled  to  pass 
them  shows  how  desperate  the  case  of  the  labourer  had 
become.  His  position  had  grown  steadily  worse.  Pauperism 
had  been  slowly  increasing  in  the  course  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  even  when  agriculture,  manufac- 
tures, and  commerce  were  improving,  when  the  price  of 
corn  was  low,  and  money  wages  comparatively  high  ; 2  and 
we  may  well  ask  what  was  the  cause  of  this  curious  com- 
bination of  progress  and  poverty  ?  The  answer  is  to  be 
found  in  the  conditions  which  that  progress  created,  and 
especially  in  the  case  of  agriculture.  It  becomes  increas- 
ingly evident  that  a  very  powerful  cause  of  pauperism  was 
the  system  of  enclosures,3  accompanied  by  evictions 4  of 
farmers  and  cottagers  by  landowners,  eager  to  try  new 
agricultural  improvements. 

Sometimes,  also,  farmers  sent  off  their  labourers  on 
turning  their  fields  into  pasture;  at  others  the  farmers 
themselves  were  ejected,  and  sank  into  the  condition  of 

1  See  Nicholls,  History  of  the  Poor  Law,  ii.  137. 

2  Of.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  100. 

8  Eden,  State  of  the  Poor,  ii.  30,  147,  384,  550. 

J  Laurence,  Duty  of  a  Steward,  3,  4  ;  Toynbee,  u.  «.,  100. 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    411 

labourers,  or  swelled  the  numbers  of  the  unemployed.1 
The  consolidation  of  farms2  placed  the  labourer  at  the 
mercy  of  the  capitalist  farmer,  who  ground  down  his  wages 
to  the  lowest  possible  point ;  and  enclosures,  though  ulti- 
mately beneficial,  contributed  at  first  rather  to  the  growth 
than  to  the  removal  of  pauperism.  The  Act  of  Elizabeth, 
which  provided  that  each  new  cottage  should  have  four  acres 
of  land,  was  repealed,  ostensibly  on  the  ground  that  it  made 
it  difficult  for  the  industrious  poor  to  procure  habitations  ; 
but,  in  reality,  because  it  did  not  always  suit  the  selfish 
interests  of  the  landowners.3  Its  repeal  was  a  great  blow, 
which  was  further  aggravated  by  the  loss  of  bye-industries, 
and  by  the  bad  harvests  already  referred  to;  and  the 
problem  of  poverty  became  so  acute  that  the  Legislature 
had  to  devise  some  method  of  dealing  with  it. 

Hence  we  find  several  Poor  Law  Acts  passed  towards  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  most  noticeable  of 
these  was  that  known  as  Gilbert's  Act,4  in  1782.  It 
alludes  to  the  great  increase  of  expenditure,  and  the  equally 
great  increase  of  pauperism,  and,  after  blaming  the  parochial 
authorities  for  this  state  of  things,  takes  away  from  them 
the  administration  of  relief.  The  justices  were  consti- 
tuted the  guardians  of  the  poor  and  the  administrators  of 
relief,  and  power  was  given  to  form  Unions  of  parishes  by 
voluntary  arrangement,  and  to  build  a  Workhouse  for  the 
Union.5  The  guardians  were  expressly  forbidden  to  send 
any  but  the  "  impotent  "  to  the  workhouse,  and  were  to 
find  suitable  employment  for  the  able-bodied  near  their  own 
homes.  The  main  result  of  this  well-meaning  but  fallacious 
measure  was  to  increase  the  cost  of  relief  some  30  per  cent. 
Other  Acts,  dealing  with  minor  details  of  administration, 
were  subsequently  passed,  but  the  decisive  step  of  legalising 
out-door  relief  to  the  able-bodied  and  giving  it  in  aid  cA 
wages  was  not  taken  till  1796.  The  old  workhouse  test 
of  1722  was  hereby8  abolished  as  inconvenient  and  opprea- 

1  Eden,  State  of  the  Poor,  i.  329,  ii.  30,  384,  650. 

2  Ibid.,  and  Toynbce,  Indust.  Rev.,  p.  101. 

3  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  p.  68.     Elizabeth's  Act  wan  the  31  Eliz.,  o.  7. 

4  The  22  Geo.  III.,  c.  83.  '"  Fowlo,  Poor  Law,  p.  69. 
*  The  Act  36  George  III.,  c.  10  and  c.  23. 


4i2  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

sive,  and  parish  authorities  were  empowered  to  give  relief 
to  any  industrious  poor  person  at  his  own  residence. 
Refusal  to  enter  a  workhouse  was  not  to  be  a  reason  for 
withholding  relief.  The  justices  were  also  authorised  to 
order  relief  for  a  certain  time  to  people  who  were  "entitled 
to  ask  and  receive  such  relief  at  their  own  houses."  By 
this  Act,  therefore,  an  allowance  was  freely  given  to  every 
poor  person  who  chose  to  ask  for  it,  and  the  labourers' 
wages  were  systematically  made  up  out  of  the  rates.1  To 
complete  the  history  of  this  old  code  of  Poor  Laws,  it  may 
be  added  that  in  1801  the  Justices  were  made  the  rating 
as  well  as  the  relieving  authority,  while,  to  make  them 
"  more  safe  in  the  execution  of  their  duty,"  the  nominal 
penalty  of  2d.  only  was  to  be  imposed  upon  a  justice  who 
made  an  illegal  decision,  unless  it  was  plain  that  he  was 
actuated  by  improper  motives.2  The  reason  for  this 
measure  is  obvious :  the  landed  gentry,  from  whom  the 
justices  were  chiefly  chosen,  were  hereby  allowed  to  fix  the 
rates,  and  even  to  amend  them  by  altering  names  and 
amounts ;  in  other  words,  to  adjudicate  upon  a  question  in 
which  they  themselves  were  the  most  interested  persons 
present.3  It  is,  of  course,  wrong  to  accuse  them  of  con- 
sciously yielding  to  self-interest  in  their  decisions ;  but  no 
one  can  be  surprised  to  learn  that  the  poor-rate  was  often 
apportioned  so  as  to  fall  most  heavily  upon  others  than 
themselves,  and  upon  parishes  other  than  those  in  which 
the  rating  justices  had  rateable  property.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, landowners  would  sometimes  pull  down  every 
cottage  on  their  estate,4  so  as  to  compel  surrounding 
parishes  to  pay  the  poor-rates  allowed  to  the  labourers  who 
worked  on  their  property;  in  other  words,  the  labourers' 
wages  were  paid  half  by  the  employer  and  half  by  the  un- 
fortunate non-employers  in  the  next  parish. 

§  236.   The  Poor  Law  and  the  Allowance  System. 

The  burden  upon  non-employers  was,  in  fact,  sometimes 
almost  intolerable.     The  poor-rate,  when  levied  upon  house 
1  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  71,  87. 

a  Ib.,  p.  71.     The  Act  was  the  43  George  III.,  c.  141.  •  Ib. 

4  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  p.  88. 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    413 

property,  was  simply  a  rate  in  aid  of  wages,  paid  by  those 
who  did  not  employ  labour.1  This  was  the  case  not  only 
in  agricultural  districts,  but  even  in  manufacturing  towns. 
Thus,  at  Nottingham,  employers  deliberately  reduced  the 
rate  of  wages  for  stocking  making,  and  then  gave  their 
men  a  certificate  to  the  effect  that  they  were  only  earning 
(say)  6s.  per  week  ;  the  men  then  applied  to  the  parish, 
who  allowed  them  4s.  or  5s.  more.2  Those  manufacturers 
who  employed  parish  apprentices  sometimes  even  received 
annual  payments  from  the  parish  for  keeping  its  paupers  at 
work.3  Meanwhile,  the  poorer  ratepayers,  on  whom  the 
burden  of  rates  fell  most  severely,  often  earned  less  and 
worked  harder  than  the  paupers  whom  they  helped  to 
support.  One  witness,  before  the  Poor  Law  Commission  of 
1834,  summed  up  their  condition  in  the  pregnant  sentence  : 
"  Poor  is  the  diet  of  the  pauper,  poorer  is  the  diet  of  the 
small  ratepayer,  but  poorest  is  that  of  the  independent 
labourer."4  Indeed,  the  independent  labourer  was  in  very  evil 
case.  Often  he  could  not  get  work,  because  he  was  superseded 
by  paupers,  who  were  set  to  work  by  the  overseers  at  the  cost 
of  the  parish.  If  an  industrious  man  was  known  to  have 
saved  money,  he  would  be  left  without  work  till  his 
savings  were  all  spent,  and  then  he  could  be  employed  as 
a  pauper.  Sometimes,  even,  men  were  discharged  by  their 
employers  till  they  were  reduced  to  the  desired  state,6  so 
that  the  burden  of  maintaining  them  was  cast  upon  the 
parish,  while  the  employer  had  to  pay  only  a  nominal  wage. 
The  full  working  of  this  ingenious  plan  was  seen  in  the 
"ticket  system."  Under  this  the  parish  sold  "the  com- 
modity of  labour  "  to  the  farmers,  and  made  up  the  differ- 
ence between  the  labourers'  actual  wages  and  the  income 
supposed  to  be  his  due  out  of  the  rates.  In  one  place 
there  was  a  weekly  sale  of  labour,  at  which  an  eyewitness 
saw  ten  men  allotted  to  a  farmer  for  five  shillings.8  It 
was  called  the  "ticket  system,"  because  each  pauper  re- 
ceived a  ticket  from  the  overseer  as  a  warrant  for  the 
farmer  to  employ  him  at  the  cost  of  the  parish.  It  is  not 

1  Powle,  Poor  Law,  p.  87.      a  /&.,  p.  87.         3  /&.,  and  </.  above,  p.  388. 
•/&.,  p.  86.  •/&.,  p.  87.         •/&.,?.  82. 


414  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

surprising  that  the  farmers  supported  this  system,  iniquit- 
ous though  it  was,  and  declared  that  "  high  wages  and  free 
labour  would  ruin  them."  l  But  in  the  long  run  it  often 
caused  even  the  farmer  some  pecuniary  loss,  not  directly, 
for  he  saved  more  in  his  wages-bill  than  he  spent  in  poor- 
rates,  but  indirectly,  since  the  work  of  the  labourers  thus 
employed  was  badly  and  inefficiently  performed.2 

Indeed,  we  may  sum  up  by  saying  that  the  allowance 
system,  introduced  by  the  Speenhamland  resolutions  and 
made  law  by  the  Act  of  1796,  succeeded  in  demoralising 
both  employers  and  employed  alike,  taking  the  responsibility 
of  giving  decent  wages  off  the  shoulders  of  the  farmers,  and 
putting  a  premium  upon  the  incontinence  3  and  thriftlessness 
of  the  labourers.  This  method  of  relief  was  general  from 
about  1795  to  1834,  in  fact,  until  the  enactment  of  the 
New  Poor  Law.4  Employers  of  labour,  manufacturing  as 
well  as  agricultural,5  put  down  wages  in  many  parts  of  the 
country  to  what  was  simply  a  starvation  point,  knowing 
that  an  allowance  would  be  made  to  the  labourers,  upon  the 
magistrates'  orders,  out  of  the  poor  rates.  The  wages 
actually  paid  to  able-bodied  men  were  frequently  only  five 
or  six  shillings  a  week,  but  relief  to  the  amount  of  four, 
five,  six,  or  seven  shillings  a  week,  according  to  the  size  of 
the  man's  family,  was  given  out  of  the  rates.  Such  a 
system  could  not  fail  to  have  a  permanently  disastrous 
influence  upon  the  moral  and  social  condition  of  those  who 
suffered  from  it,  taking  from  them  all  self-reliance,  all  hope, 
all  incentives  to  improving  their  position  in  life.  This  was 
soon  noticed  by  Arthur  Young,  who  wrote  :  "  Many  authors 
have  remarked  with  surprise  the  great  change  which  has 
taken  place  in  the  spirit  of  the  lower  classes  of  the  people 
within  the  last  twenty  years.  There  was  formerly  found  an 
unconquerable  aversion  to  depend  on  the  parish,  insomuch 
that  many  would  struggle  through  life  with  large  families 
never  applying  for  relief.  That  spirit  is  annihilated ;  appli- 

1  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  103. 

2  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  p.  89,  on  The  Deterioration  of  Labour. 

3  For  the  sad  facts  and  for  the  bastardy  laws,    cf.  Fowle,  Poor  Law, 
pp.  89-92,  summarising  the  evidence  of  the  Commission  of  1834. 

4  The  4  and  5  William  JY,,  c.  76.  5  Above,  p.  413  (Nottingham). 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    415 

cations  of  late  have  been  as  numerous  as  the  poor ;  and  one 
great  misfortune  attending  the  change  is  that  every  sort  of 
industry  flags  when  once  the  parochial  dependence  takes 
place :  it  then  becomes  a  struggle  between  the  pauper  and 
the  parish,  the  one  to  do  as  little  and  to  receive  as  much  as 
possible,  and  the  other  to  pay  by  no  rule  but  the  summons 
and  order  of  the  justice.  The  evils  resulting  are  beyond  all 
calculation ;  for  the  motives  to  industry  and  frugality  are 
cut  up  by  the  roots,  whenever  a  poor  man  knows  that  if  he 
do  not  feed  himself  the  parish  must  do  it  for  him  ;  and  that 
he  has  not  the  most  distant  hope  of  ever  attaining  indepen- 
dency, let  him  be  as  industrious  and  frugal  as  he  may.  To 
acquire  land  enough  to  build  a  cottage  on  is  a  hopeless  aim 
in  ninety-nine  parishes  out  of  a  hundred."  1  Unfortunately 
the  last  sentence  of  this  remark  is  often  true  even  to-day ; 
nor  have  the  evil  traditions  of  the  Old  Poor  Law  entirely 
disappeared.  Down  to  the  reform  of  1834,  "the  public 
funds  were  regarded  as  a  regular  part  of  the  maintenance 
of  the  labouring  people  engaged  in  agriculture,  and  were 
administered  by  more  than  2000  justices,  15,000  sets  of 
overseers,  and  15,000  vestries,  acting  always  independently 
of  each  other,  and  very  commonly  in  opposition,  quite  un- 
controlled and  ignorant  of  the  very  rudiments  of  political 
economy.  The  £7,000,000  or  more2  of  public  money  was 
the  price  paid  for  converting  the  free  labourer  into  a  slave, 
without  reaping  even  such  returns  as  slavery  can  give. 
The  able-bodied  pauper  was  obliged  to  live  where  the  Law 
of  Settlement  placed  him,  to  receive  the  income  which  the 
neighbouring  magistrates  thought  sufficient,  to  work  for  the 
master  and  in  the  way  which  the  parish  authorities  pre- 
scribed, and  very  often  to  marry  the  wife  they  found  for 
him."8 

§  237.  Restrictions  upon  Labour. 

What  made  the  condition  of  the  labourers  worse  still, 
was  the  fact  that  they  could  neither  go  from  one  place  to 

1  Young,  Aimed*  of  Agriculture,  xxxvi.  604. 

s  For  exact  sum,  cf.  Porter,  Progrta*  of  the  Nation,  L  82. 

*  Fowle,  Poor  Law,  pp.  73,  74. 


4i 6  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

another  to  seek  work,  nor  could  they  combine  in  industrial 
partnerships  for  their  mutual  interests.  The  Law  of  Settle- 
ment effectually  prevented  migration  of  labourers  from  one 
parish  to  another.  It  began  with  the  Statute l  of  1662, 
which  allowed  a  pauper  to  obtain  relief  only  from  that 
parish  where  he  had  his  settlement,  "  settlement "  being 
defined  as  forty  days'  residence  without  interruption.  The 
reason  was  that  each  parish,  though  ready  to  pay  for  its 
own  poor,  was  not  willing  to  pay  for  those  of  other  parishes. 
There  were  many  variations  and  complications  of  this 
Statute  made  in  ensuing  reigns,  but  it  remained  substan- 
tively  the  same  2  till  it  was  mitigated  by  the  Poor  Law  of 
1834.  Its  main  results  were  seen,  as  Adam  Smith  re- 
marked,3 in  the  "  obstruction  of  the  free  circulation  of 
labour,"  and  consequently  in  the  great  inequality  in  wages 
which  was  frequently  found  in  places  at  no  great  distance 
one  from  another.  Nowhere  else,  he  says,4  does  one  "  meet 
with  those  sudden  and  unaccountable  differences  in  the 
wages  of  neighbouring  places  which  we  sometimes  find  in 
England,  where  it  is  often  more  difficult  for  a  poor  man  to 
pass  the  artificial  boundary  of  a  parish  than  an  arm  of  the 
sea  or  a  ridge  of  mountains."  Again  he  remarks  5  :  "  there 
is  scarce  a  poor  man  in  England  of  forty  years  of  age,  I 
will  venture  to  say,  who  has  not  in  some  part  of  his  life 
felt  himself  most  cruelly  oppressed  by  this  ill- contrived 
Law  of  Settlements."  6 

§  238.  The  Combination  Acts. 

The  Law  of  Settlement  was  further  strengthened  by  what 
are  called  the  Combination  Laws,7  which  forbade  workmen 
to  meet  together  in  order  to  deliberate  over  their  various 

1  The  13  and  14  Charles  II.,  c.  12. 

2  Although  it  was  nominally  repealed.     Fowle,  Poor  Law,  70,  84.     For 
the  whole  question,  see  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  I.,  ch.  x. 
(Vol.  I.,  p.  144,  Clarendon  Press  edn.). 

8  Wealth  of  Nations,  u.  s.,  i.  148.  *  Ib.  6  76 .,  i.  149. 

6  Cf.  also  Toynbee'a  remarks,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  186. 

7  These  date  from  the  2  and  3  Ed.  VI.,  c.  15,  prohibiting  "all  con- 
spiracies and  covenants  not  to  do  their  work  but  at  a  certain  price,"  under 
penalty  of  the  pillory  and  loss  of  an  ear.     Other  acts  were  passed,  but  all 
were  summed  up  in  the  famous  40  Geo.  III.,  c.  60. 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    417 

industrial  interests,  or  to  gain  a  rise  in  wages.  "  We  have 
no  Acts  of  Parliament,"  said  Adam  Smith,1  with  justice, 
"  against  combining  to  lower  the  price  of  work,  but  many 
against  combining  to  raise  it."  For  "  when  masters  com- 
bine together  in  order  to  reduce  the  wages  of  their  workmen, 
they  commonly  enter  into  a  private  bond  or  agreement,  not 
to  give  more  than  a  certain  wage  under  a  certain  penalty. 
Were  the  workmen  to  enter  into  a  contrary  combination  of 
the  same  kind,  not  to  accept  a  certain  wage  under  a  certain 
penalty,  the  law  would  punish  them  very  severely  ;  and  if 
it  dealt  impartially,2  it  would  treat  the  masters  in  the  same 
manner."  Elsewhere  he  describes  the  inevitable  result  of 
a  strike  as  being  "  nothing  but  the  punishment  or  ruin  of 
the  ringleaders." 3  The  legislation  of  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  all  in  favour  of  the  masters,  and 
after  several  acts  had  been  passed  regulating  combinations 
in  separate  trades,  the  famous  Act4  of  1800  was  applied 
to  all  occupations,  and  strictly  forbade  all  combinations, 
unions,  or  associations  of  workmen  for  the  purpose  of 
obtaining  an  advance  in  wages  or  lessening  the  hours  of 
work.  All  freedom  of  action  was  taken  away  from  the 
workmen  :  "  the  only  freedom,"  remarks  an  eminent  and 
impartial  judge 6  "for  which  the  law  seems  to  me  to  have 
been  specially  solicitous  is  the  freedom  of  employers  from 
coercion  by  their  men."  The  reason  is  obvious ;  it  was 
because  the  working  classes  had  no  voice  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  state,  and  were  unable  to  check  a  measure 
inspired  only  by  the  self-interest  of  the  employers.  As  yet 
they  had  no  political  influence  whatever,  except  that  un- 
satisfactory and  unconstitutional  influence  which  emanates 
from  the  violence  of  a  riotous  mob.6  "  The  English 
statute-book  was  disfigured  by  laws  which  robbed  the 
labourer  as  a  wage-earner,  and  degraded  him  as  a  citizen," 

1  Wealth  <tf  Nations,  Bk.  I.,  ch.  viii.  (Vol.  L,  p.  70). 

*  76. ,  Bk.  L,  ch.  x.  (Vol.  L,  p.  150). 
»  76.,  Bk.  L,  ch.  viii.  (Vol.  L,  p.  71). 

4  The  40  Geo.  III.,  c.  60 ;  see  Howell,  Trade*  Unionism  New  and  Old, 
p.  39. 

8  Justice  Stephen,  History  of  the  Criminal  Law,  iii.  208. 

•  CJ.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  186. 

2  D 


4i 8  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

for  "  the  power  of  making  laws  was  concentrated  in  the 
hands  of  the  landowners,  the  great  merchant-princes,  and 
a  small  knot  of  capitalist-manufacturers,  who  wielded  that 
power  in  the  interests  of  their  class  rather  than  for  the 
good  of  the  people."  x  No  doubt  the  action  of  these  law- 
makers was  natural,  but  it  is  only  another  example  of  the 
fact  that  no  one  class,  and,  for  that  matter,  no  single 
individual,  is  fit  to  possess  irresponsible  and  absolute  power 
over  another.  In  spite  of  Utopian  theorists,  selfishness  is 
still  the  predominant  factor  in  human  nature  ;  and  the 
most  feasible,  if  not  the  most  ideal,  form  of  government  is 
that  in  which  the  selfishness  of  one  class  is  counteracted  by 
the  selfishness  of  another.  But  in  1800  the  workmen 
had,  of  course,  no  political  influence  :  they  could  only  show 
their  discontent  by  riots  and  rick-burnings.  Yet  the  time 
of  their  deliverance  was  at  hand. 

I  have  already  referred  to  the  sympathy  between  the 
French  Revolution  and  the  Industrial  Revolution.  The 
former,  it  is  true,  frightened  our  statesmen  and  delayed 
reform,  but  it  gave  courage  to  the  working  classes,  and 
made  them  hope  fiercely  for  freedom.  The  latter  Revolu- 
tion concentrated  men  more  and  more  closely  together  in 
large  centres  of  industry,  dissociated  them  from  their  em- 
ployers, and  roused  a  spirit  of  antagonism  which  is  inevit- 
able when  both  employers  and  employed  alike  fail  to  recog- 
nise the  essential  identity  of  their  interests.  Now,  wherever 
there  are  large  bodies  of  men  crowded  together,  there  is 
always  a  rapid  spread  of  new  ideas,  new  political  enthusi- 
asms, and  social  activities.  And  in  spite  of  the  lack  of  the 
franchise,  the  artisans  of  our  large  towns  made  their  voices 
heard  ;  fiercely  and  roughly,  no  doubt,  and  often  at  first  in 
riot  and  uproar,  but  they  had  no  other  means.  There  were 
found  some  statesmen  in  Parliament,  chiefly  disciples  of 
Adam  Smith,2  who  gave  articulate  utterance  to  the  demands 
of  labour,  and  owing  to  their  endeavours  the  Combination 
Laws  were  annulled3  in  1824.  All  previous  statutes,  so 
far  as  they  related  to  combinations  of  workmen,  were 

1  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  186.  2  Ib.,  p.  195. 

1  By  the  5  Geo.  IV.,  c.  95. 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    419 

repealed,  and  those  who  joined  such  associations  were  to  be 
no  longer  liable  to  be  prosecuted  for  conspiracy.  But  the 
following  year  proved  how  insecure  was  the  position  of  the 
labourers  without  definite  political  influence.  The  em- 
ployers of  labour  were  able  to  induce  Parliament  in  1825 
to  stultify  itself,1  by  declaring  illegal  any  action  which 
might  result  from  those  deliberations  of  workmen  which 
a  twelvemonth  before  they  had  legalised.  But  still  the 
workers  were  allowed  to  deliberate,  strange  as  it  may  now 
seem  that  permission  was  needed  for  this,  and  their  delibera- 
tions materially  aided  in  passing  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832. 
For  as  soon  as  a  class  can  make  its  voice  heard,  even  though 
it  cannot  directly  act,  other  classes  will  take  that  utterance 
into  account. 

§  239.   Growth  of  Trades  Unions* 

But  the  Reform  Bill,  though  a  great  step  forward,  some- 
what belied  the  hopes  that  had  roused  the  enthusiasm  of 
its  industrial  supporters.  The  workmen  found  that,  after 
all,  it  merely  threw  additional  power  into  the  hands  of  the 
upper  and  middle  classes.8  Their  own  position  was  hardly 
improved.  Therefore  they  had  to  make  their  voice  heard 
again,  and,  urged  on  by  the  misery  and  poverty  in  which 
they  were  still  struggling,  they  demanded  the  Charter.  The 
Chartist*  movement  (1838  to  1848)  seems  to  us  at  the 
present  time  almost  ludicrously  moderate  in  its  demands. 
The  vote  by  ballot,  the  abolition  of  property  qualifications 
for  electors,  and  the  payment  of  parliamentary  members, 
were  the  main  objects  of  its  leaders,  though  they  asked  for 
universal  suffrage  as  well.  Nevertheless  people  were  fright- 
ened, especially  when  the  Chartists  wished  to  present  a 
monster  petition  at  Westminster  on  April  10th,  1848  ;  and 

1  In  the  Act  6  Geo.  IV.,  c.  129.  This  Act  rendered  men  liable  to  punish- 
ment for  the  use  of  threats,  intimidation,  and  obstruction  directed  towards 
the  attainment  of  the  objects  of  Trade  Unions;  </.  abo  Toynbee,  M.  »., 
p.  105. 

1  For  the  history  of  these,  </.  G.  Howell,  Conflict*  of  Capital  and  Labour, 
and  Trades  Unionism  New  and  Old. 

*  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  196. 

4  See  Gammage,  History  of  the  Chartist  Mmvment  generally. 


420  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

the  aid  of  both  military  and  police  was  invoked.  The  move- 
ment collapsed,  and  finally  died  away  when  the  repeal  of 
the  Corn  Laws  had  restored  prosperity  to  the  nation.  Many 
have  laughed  at  the  working  classes  for  trying  to  gain  some 
infinitesimal  fraction  of  political  power ;  but  working  men 
are  generally  acute,  especially  where  their  own  interests  are 
concerned,  and  they  saw  that  this  was  the  ultimate  means 
of  material  prosperity ;  nor  has  the  event  failed  to  justify 
their  belief.1  In  the  somewhat  quieter  times  which  followed 
the  collapse  of  the  Chartists,  their  influence  went  on  extend- 
ing, and  though  the  workmen  ceased  to  agitate  they  were 
not  idle,  but  continued  steadily  organising  themselves  in 
Trades  Unions.  A  large  number  of  Unions  were  formed 
between  1850  and  I860.2  These  institutions  were  not, 
however,  recognised  by  law  till  a  Commission  was  appointed, 
including  Sir  William  Erie,  Lord  Elcho,  and  Thomas  Hughes, 
to  inquire  into  their  constitution  and  objects  (February 
1867).  Their  Report  disclosed  the  existence  of  intimida- 
tion, with  occasional  outrages — as  was  natural  when  the 
men  had  no  other  way  of  giving  utterance  to  their  wishes 
— but  on  the  whole  the  Report  was  in  favour  of  the  repeal 
of  the  Act  of  1825.  This  Act  was  accordingly  repealed.3 
The  Unions  were  legalised  by  the  Trade  Union  Act  of  1871, 
and  this  Act4  was  further  extended5  and  amended  in  1875 
and  1876.  The  old  law  of  master  and  servant  had  passed 
away,  and  employer  and  employed  were  now  on  an  equal 
political  footing.  It  has  remained  for  the  men  by  the 
exercise  of  silent  strength  to  place  themselves  on  an  equal 
footing  in  other  respects.  Meanwhile  the  employers, 
alarmed  at  Trades  Unionism,  had  entered  into  a  similar 
combination  by  forming  the  National  Federation  of  Em- 
ployers6 in  1873,  and  the  long  struggle  of  the  working 
classes  for  industrial  freedom  did  not  result  in  any  lessening 

1  Toynbee  points  this  out  very  clearly,  and  shows  how  political  influence 
led  to  the  legislation  of  Trade  Unions  ;  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  196. 

2  Howell,  Trades  Unionism  New  and  Old,  p.  59. 

3  By  the  38  and  39  Victoria,  c.  31  and  c.  32. 

4  The  34  and  35  Victoria,  c.  31  and  32  ;  Howell,   Trades  Unionism  New 
and  Old,  p.  61. 

5  By  the  38  and  39  Victoria,  c.  86. 

11  Cf.  Webb,  History  of  Trades  Unionism,  pp.  312,  313. 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    421 

of  the  feeling  of  class  antagonism.1  The  formation  in  1895 
of  the  Industrial  Union  of  Employers  and  Employed  is  a 
recent  attempt  to  bring  about  better  relations  between 
master  and  man,8  and  if  its  objects  were  carried  out  on  a 
wide  scale,  it  would  do  much  good.  Apart  from  the  ques- 
tion of  antagonism,  Trades  Unions  have  done  much  to  gain 
a  greater  measure  of  material  prosperity  for  the  working 
classes,  and  to  give  them  a  larger  share  than  formerly  in 
the  wealth  which  the  workers  have  helped  to  create.  When 
we  look  back  upon  the  last  half-century,  we  are  inclined  to 
wonder  that  trades  unionists  have  been  so  moderate  in  their 
demands,  considering  the  misery  and  poverty  amidst  which 
they  grew  up. 

§  240.  The  Working  Classes  Fifty  Years  Ago. 

For  it  must  continually  be  remembered  that  the  condi- 
tion of  the  mass  of  the  people  in  the  first  half  of  this 
century  was  one  of  the  deepest  depression.  Several  writers 
have  commented  upon  this,  and  have  taken  occasion  to 
remark  upon  the  great  progress  in  the  prosperity  of  the 
working  classes  since  that  time.  It  is  true  they  have  pro- 
gressed since  then,  but  it  has  hardly  been  progress  so  much 
as  a  return  to  the  state  of  things  about  1760  or  1770. 
The  fact  has  been,  that  after  the  introduction  of  the  new 
industrial  system  the  condition  of  the  working  classes  rapidly 
declined  ;  wages  were  lower,8  and  prices,  at  least  of  wheat, 
were  often  higher;4  till  at  length  the  lowest  depth  of 
poverty  was  reached  about  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of 
Queen  Victoria.  Since  then  their  condition  has  been 
gradually  improving,  partly  owing  to  the  philanthropic 
labours  of  men  like  Lord  Shaftesbury,  and  partly  owing  to 
the  combined  action  of  working-men  themselves.  To  quote 
the  expression  of  that  well-known  statistician,  Mr  Giffen  : 6 

1  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  pp.  196-198. 

a  See  the  Report  of  the  Preliminary  Industrial  Conference  held  at 
London,  March  16,  1894  (Methuen,  London). 

8  See  the  tables  in  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  ii.  252,  263. 

4  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  166 ;  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution, 
p.  101. 

8  Essays  in  Finance,  Second  Series  (1886),  p.  390,  on  Progress  of  the  Work- 
ing Classes. 


422 


INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 


"  It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  pauperism  was  nearly  break- 
ing down  the  country  half  a  century  ago.  The  expenditure 
on  poor  law  relief  early  in  the  century  and  down  to  1830-31 
was  nearly  as  great  at  times  as  it  is  now.  With  half  the 
population  in  the  country  that  there  now  is,  the  burden  of 
the  poor  was  the  same."  The  following  table  will  show l 
the  actual  figures  of  English  pauperism  at  a  time  when  the 
wealth  of  the  nation  was  advancing  by  leaps  and  bounds. 


YEAR. 

Population. 

Poor  Rate  raised. 

Rate  per  head  of 
population. 

8.    d. 

1760 

7,000,000 

£1,250,000 

3    7 

1784 

8,000,000 

£2,000,000 

5    0 

1803 

9,216,000 

£4,077,000 

8  11 

1818 

11,876,000 

£7,870,000 

13    3 

1820 

12,046,000 

£7,329,000 

12    2 

1830 

13,924,000 

£6,829,000 

10    9 

1841 

15,911,757 

£4,760,929 

5  llf 

It  will  be  noticed  that  the  rate  was  highest  in  1818,  which 
was  shortly  after  the  close  of  the  great  Continental  War, 
but  fell  rapidly  after  1830,  and  since  1841  the  rate  per 
head  of  population  has  not  been  much  more  than  six  or 
seven  shillings. 

But  the  mere  figures  of  pauperism,  significant  though 
they  are,  can  give  no  idea  of  the  vast  amount  of  misery 
and  degradation  which  the  majority  of  the  working  classes 
suffered.2  The  tale  of  their  sufferings  may  be  studied  in  the 
Blue-books  and  Reports  3  of  the  various  Commissions  which 
investigated  the  state  of  industrial  life  in  the  factories, 
mines,  and  workshops  between  1833  and  1842  ;  or  it  may 
be  read  in  the  burning  pages  of  Engels' 4  State  of  the 
Working  Classes  in  England  in  1844,  which  is  little  more 

1  The  first  figure  is  from  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  94 ;  others 
from  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  82,  83 ;  ii.  362,  363. 

2  "  The  fact  is,"  said  Toynbee  (Ind.  Rev.,  p.  58),  "  the  more  we  examine 
the  actual  course  of  affairs,  the  more  we  are  amazed  at  the  unnecessary 
suffering  that  has  been  inflicted  on  the  people." 

8  E.g.,  Reports  on  Employment  of  Children  in  Factories,  1816,  1833,  and 
(mines)  1842. 

4  This  book,  though  avowedly  Socialist,  and  written  in  a  very  one-sided 
tone,  is  nevertheless  accurate  as  to  facts,  which  are  all  taken  from  the 
above-mentioned  Reports.  It  forms  a  convenient  book  of  reference.  It 
was  published  in  German  in  1845,  and  in  a  new  English  edition  in  1892. 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    423 

than  a  sympathetic  resume"  of  the  facts  set  forth  in  official 
documents.  We  hear  of  children  and  young  people  in 
factories  overworked  and  beaten  as  if  they  were  slaves ;  * 
of  diseases  and  distortions  only  found  in  manufacturing 
districts  ; z  of  filthy,  wretched  homes,  where  people  huddled 
together  like  wild  beasts  ; 8  we  hear  of  girls  and  women 
working  underground  in  the  dark  recesses  of  the  coal- 
mines, dragging  loads  of  coal  in  .cars  in  places  where  no 
horses  could  go,  and  harnessed  and  crawling  along  the 
subterranean  pathways  like  beasts  of  burden.*  Everywhere 
we  find  cruelty  and  oppression,  and  in  many  cases  the 
workmen  were  but  slaves,  bound  to  fulfil  their  masters' 
commands  under  fear  of  dismissal  and  starvation.  Freedom 
they  had  in  name  ;  freedom  to  starve  and  die  ;  but  not 
freedom  to  speak,  still  less  to  act,  as  citizens  of  a  free  state. 
They  were  often  even  obliged  to  buy  their  food  at  exor- 
bitant prices  out  of  their  scanty  wages  at  a  shop  kept  by 
their  employer,  where  it  is  needless  to  say  that  they  paid 
the  highest  possible  price  for  the  worst  possible  goods. 
This  was  rendered  possible  by  the  system  of  paying  work- 
men in  tickets  or  orders  upon  certain  shops,  which  were 
under  the  supervision  of  their  employers.  It  was  called 
the  "  truck  system  "  ;  and  was  at  length  finally  condemned 
by  the  law6  (1887)  after  many  futile  attempts  had  been 
made  to  suppress  it.6 

But  though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  sufferings  of  the 
working  classes  during  the  transition  period  of  the  Indus- 
trial Revolution  were  aggravated  by  the  extortions  of 
employers,  and  by  the  partiality  of  a  legislature  which 

1  See  above,  pp.  389,  400,  401.  »  Of.  Engels  (ed.  1892),  pp.  151-184. 

J  Engels  (ed.  1892),  pp.  23-73,  on  The  Great  Towns.  His  evidence  ia 
really  appalling. 

4  Engels,  pp.  241-260  ;  and  Report  on  Employment  in  Mints,  1842. 
1  By  tho  50  and  51  Victoria,  c.  46,  amending  the  1  and  2  William  IV., 

c.37. 

•  The  22  Geo.  II.,  c.  27  ;  the  57  Geo.  III.,  cc.  115and  122  ;  the  1  G«o.  IV., 
c.  93,  were  all  measures  passed  against  "  truck,"  and  all  ineffectual.  The 
system,  however,  has  its  apologists  (c/.  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry, 
ii.  650)  as  being  convenient,  and  the  simplest  way  of  providing  workers 
with  provisions  in  out-of-the-way  villages.  For  a  vivid  description  of  a 
scene  at  a  truck-shop,  see  Disraeli's  novel  Sybil,  Bk.  III.,  ch.  iii.  8«e 
also  note  in  Rogers'  edition  of  Adam  Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations,  i.  160. 


424 


INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 


forbade  them  to  take  common  measures  in  self-defence, 
yet  there  was,  in  addition  to  the  Revolution  itself,  one 
great  cause  which  underlay  all  these  minor  causes,  namely, 
the  Continental  war  which  ended  in  1815.  It  has  been 
forcibly  and  accurately  expressed  by  a  great  economist : 
"  Thousands  of  homes  were  starved  in  order  to  find  the 
means  for  the  great  war,  the  cost  of  which  was  really 
supported  by  the  labour  of  those  who  toiled  on  and  earned 
the  wealth  that  was  lavished  freely — and  at  good  interest 
for  the  lenders — by  the  Government.  The  enormous  taxa- 
tion and  the  gigantic  loans  came  from  the  store  of 
accumulated  capital  which  the  employers  wrung  from  the 
poor  wages  of  labour,  or  which  the  landlords  extracted 
from  the  growing  gains  of  their  tenants.  To  outward 
appearance  the  strife  was  waged  by  armies  and  generals  ; 
in  reality,  the  sources  on  which  the  struggle  was  based 
were  the  stint  and  starvation  of  labour,  the  overtaxed  and 
underfed  toils  of  childhood,  the  underpaid  and  uncertain 
employment  of  men." 1 

§  241.    Wages. 

And,  indeed,  if  we  examine  some  of  the  wages  actually 
paid  at  the  beginning  of  this  century,  and  again  at  the 
beginning  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign,  we  shall  find  that 
they  were  excessively  low.  The  case  of  common  weavers 
was  particularly  hard  in  the  years  of  the  great  war,  and 
affords  an  interesting  example  of  the  decrease  of  wages  in 
this  period.  For  purposes  of  comparison  I  append  the 
price  of  wheat  and  of  weekly  wages  in  the  same  years ; 


YEAS. 

Weavers'  Wages.2 

Wheat  per  qr.3 

8.      d. 

s.   d. 

1802     

13  10 

67    9 

1806     

10     6 

76    9 

1812     

6     4 

122    8 

1816     

5     2 

76    2 

1817     

4    3i 

94    0 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  505. 

2  Leone  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  p.  146. 

8  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  156.    The  prices  are  averages  from  the 
London  Gazette,  and  were  frequently  far  higher  in  the  course  of  the  year. 


CONDITION  OF  THE  WORKING  CLASSES    425 


for  the  price  of  wheat  forms  a  useful  standard  by  which  to 
gauge  the  real  value  of  wages,  even  when  it  is  not  con- 
sumed in  large  quantities.  It  will  be  seen  that  wages  were 
at  their  lowest  point  just  after  the  conclusion  of  the  war, 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  wheat  was  almost  at  famine 
prices.  After  this,  however,  and  till  1830,  the  wages  of 
weavers  rose  again,  for  the  new  spinning  machinery  had 
increased  the  supply  of  yarn  at  a  much  greater  rate  than 
weavers  could  be  found  to  weave  it,  and  hence  there  was 
an  increased  demand  for  weavers,  and  they  gained  propor- 
tionately higher  wages,  the  average  for  woollen  cloth 
weavers  from  1830-1845  being  14s.  to  17s.  a  week,  and 
for  worsted  stuff  weavers  11s.  to  14s.  a  week.1  But  even 
these  rates  are  miserably  low. 

The  wages  of  spinners  were  also  very  poor,  the  work 
being  mostly  done  by  women  and  children,  though  when 
men  are  employed  they  get  fairly  good  pay.  The  following 
table  *  will  show  clearly  the  various  rates,  and  it  will  be  seen 
that  here  wages  sink  steadily  till  1845,  owing  to  the  rapid 


SpiNVBxa. 

1808-15. 

1815-28. 

1823-30. 

1830-86. 

1836-45. 

Men 
Women  ... 

24/to26 
13/  to  14/ 

24/to26/ 
13/  to  14/ 

24/to26/ 
ll/  to  12/ 

24/to26/ 
8/  to  10/ 

24/to28/ 
7/to    9/ 

production  of  the  new  machinery.  The  women's  wages 
exhibit  the  fall  most  markedly,  the  labour  of  children  being 
already  affected  to  some  extent  by  the  provisions  of  the 
Factory  Acts.  As  for  the  agricultural  labourer,  he,  too, 
suffered  from  low  wages,  the  general  average  to  1845  being 
8s.  to  10s.  a  week,  and  generally  nearer  the  former  than 
the  latter  figure.3  In  fact,  the  material  condition  of  the 
working  classes  of  England  was  at  this  time  in  the  lowest 
depths  of  poverty  and  degradation,  and  this  fact  must 

1  From  a  Table  of  Wages  and  Prices,  1720-1886,  by  Thomas  Illingworth, 
Bradford  (privately  printed). 

1  Ib.  Of.  also  Porter,  Progress  of  tht  Nation,  ii.  253,  where  women's 
wages  decrease  from  10s.  in  1805  to  8s.  6}d.  in  1833.' 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  510.  According  to  the  Parliamentary  Report 
of  1822  (Reports,  4c.,  1822,  v.  73)  agricultural  wage*  had  sunk  from  16s.  or 
16s.  a  week  before  1815  to  9s.  a  week  in  1822. 


426  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

always  be  remembered  in  comparing  the  wages  of  to-day 
with  those  of  former  times.  Some  people  who  ought  to 
know  better  are  very  fond  of  talking  about  the  "  progress  of 
the  working  classes  "  in  the  last  fifty  years,  and  the  Jubilee 
of  Queen  Victoria  in  1887  afforded  ample  opportunity — of 
which  full  advantage  was  taken — for  such  optimists  to  talk 
statistics.  But  to  compare  the  wages  of  labour  properly  we 
must  go  back  a  hundred  years,  and  not  fifty,  for  fifty  years 
ago  the  English  workman  was  passing  through  a  period  of 
misery  which  we  must  devoutly  hope,  for  the  sake  of  the 
nation  at  large,  will  not  occur  again.  It  is  interesting  to 
note,  though  it  is  impossible  here  to  go  fully  into  the 
subject,  that  in  trades  where  workmen  have  combined,  since 
the  repeal  of  the  Conspiracy  Laws  in  1825  and  the  altera- 
tion in  the  Act  of  Settlement,1  wages  have  perceptibly  risen. 
Carpenters,  masons,  and  colliers  afford  examples  of  such  a  rise.2 
But  where  there  has  been  no  combination,  it  is  noteworthy 
how  little  wages  have  risen  in  proportion  to  the  increased 
production  of  the  modern  labourer,  and  to  the  higher  cost 
of  living,  nor  does  the  workman  always  receive  his  due 
share  of  the  wealth  which  he  helps  to  create.  Of  the 
results  of  labour  combinations  we  shall,  however,  have 
something  to  say  in  the  final  chapter  of  this  book.  But 
there  was  one  class  of  people  who  happened  to  obtain  a  very 
large  share  of  the  national  wealth,  and  who  grew  rich  and 
flourished  while  the  working  classes  were  almost  starving. 
In  spite  of  war  abroad  and  poverty  at  home,  the  rents  of 
the  landowners  increased,  and  the  agricultural  interest 
received  a  stimulus  which  has  resulted  in  a  very  natural 
reaction.  The  rise  in  rents  and  the  recent  depression  of 
modern  agriculture  will  form  the  subject  of  our  next 
chapter. 

1  Above,  p.  416. 

2  Thomas  Illingworth's  table,  cited  above.     Carpenters'  wages  have  risen 
from  23s.  or  24s.  in  1823-30  to  30s. -32s.  in  1886  ;  masons  from  23s. -26s.  to 
32s. -34s. ;  colliers  from  16s. -18s.  to  22s. -28s. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  RISE  AND  DEPRESSION  OF  MODERN  AGRICULTURE 

§  242.  Services  tendered  by  the  Great  Landowners. 

ALTHOUGH  there  have  been  occasions  in  our  industrial 
history  when  one  is  compelled  to  admit  that  the  deeds  of 
the  landed  gentry  have  called  for  anything  but  admiration, 
we  yet  must  not  overlook  the  great  services  which  this  class 
rendered  to  the  agricultural  interest  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. It  has  been  already  mentioned  that  the  development 
and  the  success  of  English  agriculture  in  the  half-century  or 
more  before  the  Industrial  Revolution  was  remarkable  and 
extensive ;  and  this  success  was  due  to  the  efforts  of  the 
landowners l  in  introducing  new  agricultural  methods.  They 
took  an  entirely  new  departure,  and  adopted  a  new  system. 
It  consisted,  as  was  mentioned  before,  in  getting  rid  of  bare 
fallows  and  poor  pastures  by  substituting  root-crops  and 
artificial  grasses.2  The  fourfold  or  Norfolk  rotation  of  crops 
was  introduced,3  the  landowners  themselves  taking  an  interest 
in  and  superintending  the  cultivation  of  their  land  and 
making  useful  experiments  upon  it.  The  number  of  these 
experimenting  landlords  was  very  considerable,  and  iu  course 
of  time,  though  not  by  any  means  immediately,  the  tenant 
farmers  followed  them,  and  thus  agricultural  knowledge  and 
skill  became  more  and  more  widely  diffused.4  The  reward 
of  the  landowners  came  rapidly.  They  soon  found  their  pro- 
duction of  corn  doubled  and  their  general  produce  trebled.8 

1  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  472-475 ;  Prothero,  Ayriculture  in  England  in 
Did.  Pol.  Econ. 

2  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  468. 

'  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  43. 

4  In  1836  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  149,  mentions  the  various 
improvements  in  farming  in  a  way  which  shows  that  by  that  time  they 
were  very  widely  employed. 

*  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  209. 

4»7 


428  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

They  were  able  to  exact  higher  rents,1  for  they  had  taught 
their  tenants  how  to  make  the  land  pay  better,  and,  of 
course,  claimed  a  share  of  the  increased  profit.  About  the 
years  1740-50  the  rent  of  land,  according  to  Jethro  Tull, 
was  7s.  an  acre ; 2  some  twenty  years  or  more  afterwards 
Arthur  Young  found  the  average  rent  of  land  to  be  1  Os.  an 
acre,  and  thought  that  in  many  cases  it  ought  to  have  been 
more.  Before  very  long  it  became  more,  indeed.3  Between 
1790  and  1836  rent  was  at  least  doubled  in  every  part  of 
the  country,  and  in  many  cases  it  was  multiplied  four  or  five 
times.  Thus  we  are  told,  by  a  very  competent  authority,4 
that  in  Essex  farms  could  be  pointed  out  which  just  before 
the  war  of  the  French  Revolution  let  at  less  than  10s.  an 
acre ;  but  their  rent  rose  rapidly  during  the  war,  till  in 
1812  it  was  45s.  to  50s.  an  acre;  and  though  the  rent 
was  subsequently  reduced,  it  remained  double  the  figure  of 
1790.  In  Berkshire  and  Wiltshire,  farms  let  at  14s.  an 
acre  rose  to  70s.  in  1810,  and  after  a  reduction  were  still 
30s.  in  1836,  which  gives  an  advance  of  no  less  than  114 
per  cent,  on  the  first  figure.5  In  Staffordshire,  again,  several 
farms  on  one  estate  are  instanced,  which  in  1790  let  at  8s. 
an  acre,  and  after  having  advanced  to  35s.,  were  afterwards 
lowered  to  20s.,  an  advance  of  150  per  cent,  within  less 
than  half  a  century.6  In  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  and  Warwick, 
the  same,  or  nearly  the  same,  rise  was  experienced,  and  it 
is  more  than  probable  that  it  was  general  throughout 
the  kingdom.  During  the  same  period  the  prices  of 
most  of  the  articles  which  constitute  the  landowners'  expen- 
diture fell  materially,  so  that,  this  writer  remarks,  "if 
his  condition  be  not  improved  in  a  corresponding  degree, 
that  circumstance  must  arise  from  improvidence  or 
miscalculation  or  habits  of  expensive  living  beyond  even 
what  would  be  warranted  by  the  doubling  of  income 
which  he  has  experienced  and  is  still  enjoying." 7  In 
fact,  it  is  evident  that  the  employment  of  the  new 

1  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  164,  gives  some  startling  instances. 
3  Quoted  by  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  268. 

3  Cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  477. 

4  Porter,  Progress  of  the  Nation,  i.  164.         5  Ib.,  i.  165.        6  Ib.        7  Ib. 


MODERN   AGRICULTURE  429 

methods  in  agriculture  considerably  benefited  the  land- 
owners, though  the  rise  in  rent  is  not  to  be  attributed  solely 
to  this  cause.1  It  is  probable  that  the  landowner  would  not 
have  done  so  much  for  agriculture  if  he  had  not  expected  to 
make  something  out  of  his  experiments  ;  but  the  fact  that 
he  was  animated  by  an  enlightened  self-interest  does  not 
make  his  work  any  the  less  valuable.  The  pioneers  of  this 
improved  agriculture  came  from  Norfolk,  among  the  first 
being  Lord  Townshend  and  Mr  Coke,  the  descendant  of  the 
great  Chief  Justice.  The  former  introduced  into  Norfolk 
the  growth  of  turnips  and  artificial  grasses,  and  was  laughed 
at  by  his  contemporaries  as  Turnip  Townshend ;  the  latter 
was  the  practical  exponent  of  Arthur  Young's  theories  as  to 
the  advantages  to  be  derived  from  large  farms  and  capitalist 
farmers.2  With  improvements  in  cultivation,  and  the 
increase  both  of  assiduity  and  skill,  came  a  corresponding 
improvement  in  the  live  stock.  The  general  adoption  of 
root  crops  in  place  of  bare  fallows,  and  the  extended  cultiva- 
tion of  artificial  grasses,  supplied  the  farmer  with  a  great 
increase  of  winter  feed,  the  quality  and  nutritive  powers  of 
which  were  greatly  improved.8  Hence  with  abundance  of 
fodder  came  abundance  of  stock,  while  at  the  same  time 
great  improvements  took  place  in  breeding.  This  was 
mainly  due  to  Bakewell  (1760-85),  who  has  been  aptly 
described  as  "the  founder  of  the  graziers'  art."4  He  was 
the  first  scientific  breeder  of  sheep  and  cattle,  and  the 
methods  which  he  adopted  with  his  Leicester  sheep  and 
longhorns  were  applied  throughout  the  country  by  other 
breeders  to  their  own  animals.6  The  growth  of  population 
also  caused  a  new  impetus  to  be  given  to  the  careful  rearing 
and  breeding  of  cattle  for  the  sake  of  food,  while  the  sheep 
especially  became  even  more  useful  than  before,  since,  in 
addition  to  the  value  of  its  fleece,  its  carcase  now  was  more 

1  It  was  due,  e.g.,  also  to  the  rise  in  the  price  of  corn,  which  came  from 
(1)  bad  harvests,  (2)  growth  of  population,  and  (3)  the  great  increaa*  in 
prices  during  the  war. 

a  Prothero,  Agriculture  in  England,  in  Diet.  Pol.  Econ.,  and  also  Pioneers 
Of  English  Farming  (1881),  p.  79. 

•  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  475. 

4  Prothero,  Agriculture  in  England,  in  Diet.  Pol.  Econ. 

'  Ib.  ;  cf.  also  his  Pioneers  and  Progress  of  English  Farming  generally. 


430  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

in  demand  than  ever  for  meat.  In  various  ways,  therefore, 
the  improvements  in  agriculture  mark  a  very  important 
advance,  and  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century  witnessed 
changes  in  the  field  as  great  in  their  way  as  those  in  the 
factory. 

§243.    The  Agricultural  Revolution. 

The  new  agriculture,  indeed,  brought  with  it  a  revolu- 
tion as  important  in  its  way  as  the  Industrial  Revolution. 
One  of  the  chief  features  of  the  change — the  enclosures — 
has  been  already  commented  upon.1  The  enclosure  of  the 
common  fields  was  beneficial,2  and  to  a  certain  extent 
justifiable,  for  the  tenants  paid  rent  for  them  to  the  lord 
of  the  manor.  But  it  was  effected  at  a  great  loss  to  the 
smaller  tenant,  and  when  his  common  of  pasture  was 
enclosed  as  well,  he  was  greatly  injured,3  while  the  agricul- 
tural labourer  was  permanently  disabled.  Whereas  between 
1710  and  1760  only  some  300,000  acres  had  been 
enclosed,  in  the  period  between  1760  and  1843  nearly 
seven  million  underwent  the  same  process.4  The  en- 
closure system,  however,  was  only  part  of  a  great  change 
that  was  passing  over  the  country  ;  it  was  but  another  sign 
of  the  introduction  of  capitalist  methods  into  modern  in- 
dustry. We  have  already  noted  the  growth  of  the  capitalist 
element  in  manufactures,  and  have  seen  how  the  small 
manufacturer  died  out,  while  his  place  was  taken  by  the 
owner  of  one  or  more  huge  factories,  who  employed  hun- 
dreds of  men  under  him  ;  and  now  we  see  very  much  the 
same  process  in  agriculture.  The  small  farmer  and  the 
yeoman  disappear,  and  the  large  capitalist  takes  his 
place.  The  substitution  of  large  for  small  farms  is,  in  fact, 
one  of  the  chief  signs  of  the  Agricultural  Revolution.5 
It  was  both  the  cause  and  the  effect  of  the  enclosures; 

1  Above,  pp.  274,  275  ;  also  Prothero,  Pioneers,  pp.  66-74. 
a  Above,  p.  275  ;  and  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  89. 

3  76.,  p.  89. 

4  Ib.,  p.  89  ;  c/1  Prothero,  Pioneers,  p.  71,  who  mentions  that  from  1777 
to  1793  only  599  Enclosure  Acts  were  passed,  but  from  1793  to  1809  no  less 
than  1052  Acts,  involving  some  four-and-a-half  million  acres. 

6  Toynbee,  Industrial  Revolution,  p.  89. 


MODERN   AGRICULTURE  431 

and,  of  course,  as  large  farms  could  only  be  worked  by  men 
possessed  of  large  capital,  it  marks  very  clearly  the  growth 
of  capitalist  methods.1  It  should  be  noted,  however,  that 
the  reason  for  enclosures  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries  was  quite  different  from  that  which  caused  them 
in  the  sixteenth  century.  The  earlier  were  for  the  sake  of 
pasture,  and  the  later  to  get  land  for  tillage.2  That  the 
changes  induced  by  the  new  system  have  been  beneficial 
to  agriculture  no  one  will  attempt  to  deny,  just  as  no  one 
can  dispute  the  benefits  conferred  upon  industry  by  the 
use  of  machinery ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  one  cannot  be 
blind  to  the  fact  that  these  great  industrial  changes,  both 
in  manufactures  and  agriculture,  brought  a  great  amount  of 
misery  with  them,  both  to  the  smaller  employers  and  the 
mass  of  the  employed.  "  The  change  in  agriculture  brought 
with  it  a  new  agricultural  and  social  crisis  more  severe  than 
that  of  the  Tudor  period.  The  [eighteenth]  century  closed 
with  the  miseries  that  resulted  from  enclosures,  consolida- 
tion of  holdings,  and  the  reduction  of  thousands  of  small 
farmers  to  the  ranks  of  wage-dependent  labourers.  The 
result  of  the  crisis  was  to  consolidate  large  estates,  extin- 
guish the  yeomanry  and  peasant  proprietary,  to  turn  the 
small  farmers  into  hired  labourers,  and  to  sever  the  con- 
nection of  the  labourer  from  the  soil.'8  In  a  comparatively 
short  time  the  face  of  rural  England  was  completely 
changed  ;  the  common  fields,  those  quaint  relics  of  primi- 
tive times,  were  almost  entirely  swept  away,  and  the  large 
enclosed  fields  of  to-day,  with  their  neat  hedgerows  and 
clearly-marked  limits,  had  taken  their  places.  There  is  a 
far  wider  difference  between  the  rural  England  of  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  the  beginning 
of  the  seventeenth  or  even  eighteenth,  than  between 
the  England  of  William  of  Orange  and  of  William  of 
Normandy. 

1  Porter,  Progress  of  the.  Nation,  i.  181,  remarks  how  both  in  England 
and  Scotland  "  the  tendency  has  been  to  enlarge  the  sire  of  (arms,  and  to 
place  thorn  under  the  charge  of  men  possessed  of  capital" 

1  Prothero,  Pioneers,  p.  72. 

'Prothero,  Agriculture  in  England,  in  Did.  PoL  Scon,,  p.  29,  and 
Pioneers  of  English  Farming,  p.  73. 


432  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

The  improvements  in  agriculture,  the  enclosures,  the 
consolidation  of  small  into  large  farms,  and  the  appearance 
of  the  capitalist  farmer  are,  then,  the  chief  signs  of  the 
Agricultural  Revolution.  They  form  an  almost  exact 
parallel  to  the  inventions  of  machinery,  the  bringing 
together  of  workers  in  factories,  the  consolidation  of  small 
bye-occupations  into  larger  and  more  definite  trades,  and 
the  appearance  of  the  capitalist  millowner  in  the  realm  of 
manufacturing  industry.  COD  currently  with  these  changes 
we  notice  certain  contemporaneous  events  which,  though 
not  first  causes,1  were  still  important  factors  in  the  general 
Revolution.  These  are  the  increase  of  population,  the 
growth  of  speculative  farming  by  capitalists,  and  the  high 
prices  of  grain.  Upon  the  increase  of  population  we  have 
already  z  commented,  and  it  is  needless  to  point  out  how  it 
encouraged  agriculture  by  enlarging  the  home  market  for 
food  products.  The  second  and  third  facts — speculative 
farming  and  high  prices  of  grain — are  to  some  extent  con- 
nected, and  were  due  not  only  to  the  scarcity  which 
marked  the  harvests  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  the  consequent  pressure  of  population  upon  subsist- 
ence, but  also  to  the  artificial  conditions  created  by  the 
Corn  Laws.3  Upon  the  Corn  Laws  we  shall  have  some- 
thing to  say  almost  immediately ;  here  it  should  be  re- 
marked that  the  bad  harvests  of  1765  to  1774,  and  the 
irregularity  of  the  seasons  from  1775  onwards,  caused 
exceedingly  violent  fluctuations  in  the  price  of  corn,4  and 
these  fluctuations  were  the  opportunity  of  the  speculative 
capitalist  farmer.  In  March  1780,  wheat  was  38s.  3d. 
a  qr.,  at  Michaelmas  of  that  year  48s.,  and  in  March  1781 
it  rose  to  56s.  lid.5  Now  these  violent  fluctuations  of 
price  gave  to  those  who  could  hold  large  stocks  of  corn  the 
opportunity  of  gaining  enormous  profits,  while  the  smaller 
men,  who  either  worked  in  common  fields  or  had  small 

1  It  is  rather  strange  that  Dr  Cunningham  (Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  480) 
should  say  that  these  three  minor  facts  were  the  chief  causes  "whereby 
the  whole  character  of  English  agriculture  was  changed. " 

2  Above,  p.  349.  s  Cf.  Prothero,  Pioneers  of  English  Farming,  p.  83. 
4  Cunningham,  Growth  of  Industry,  ii.  476,  477. 

8  Tooke,  Prices,  i.  76. 


MODERN   AGRICULTURE  433 

separate  holdings,  were  generally  compelled  to  realise  their 
corn  immediately  after  harvest,  and  consequently  suffered 
severely  when  prices  were  low.1  In  1779,  for  instance, 
many  farmers  were  ruined  by  low  prices,2  and  yet  in  other 
years  prices  were  often  excessively  high.  The  nature  of 
these  violent  fluctuations,  caused  partly  by  real  scarcity  and 
partly  by  the  Corn  Laws,  was  aggravated  during  the  war 
by  the  fact  that  hardly  any  foreign  supplies  of  corn  were 
available  owing  to  the  interruption  of  commerce  ;  and  in 
any  case  there  was  not  as  yet  that  enormous  import  of 
foreign  grain  which  to-day  serves  to  steady  the  prices  of 
the  home  market.  But  these  alternations  of  high  and  low 
prices  caused  an  amount  of  speculation  which  brought 
farming  into  the  same  category  as  the  uncertainties  of  the 
Stock  Exchange,  and  while  it  often  brought  huge  profits  to 
those  who  had  capital  enough  to  wait,  led  many  of  the 
smaller  farmers  into  ruin.  Thus  the  disappearance  of 
small  farms,  already  begun,  was  largely  accelerated,  and  an 
important  feature  of  the  Agricultural  Revolution  became 
still  more  strongly  marked.  On  the  average,  however,  we 
find  that  the  prices  of  grain,  apart  from  these  fluctuations, 
were  steadily  rising,  and  grain-growing  continued  to  be  very 
profitable  to  those  who  could  afford  to  disregard  sudden 
alterations  in  prices.  The  reason  for  the  profits  of  agricul- 
ture at  this  period  we  can  now  examine. 

§  244.  The  Stimulus  caused  by  the  Bounties. 
The  real  commencement  of  the  system  of  imposing  heavy 
protective  duties  upon  the  importation  of  grain  from  abroad 
in  the  interest  of  the  landowners  was  the  Act  22  Charles 
II.,  c.  1 3.  This  Act 8  practically  prohibited  import  except 
when  wheat  was  at  famine  prices,  as  it  happened  to  be  in 
1662,  when  it  was  62s.  9Jd.  a  quarter,  the  ordinary  aver- 
age price  being  41s.4  But  it  did  not  reach  this  price  again 
for  many  years  afterwards.  The  Government  of  1688,  not 

1  Cunningham,  «.  «.,  ii.  477-479.  '  /&.,  ii.  477. 

*  By  this  law  16s.  a  qr.  was  imposed  on  wheat  aa  long  as  it  was  at  and 
below  53s.  4d.,  and  8s.  a  qr.  when  it  was  between  63s.  4d.  and  80s. ;  Adam 
Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.,  ch.  v.  (Vol.  II.,  p.  113). 

4  Rogers,  Hist.  Agric.,  v.  276,  and  </.  ch.  vii.  of  Vol.  V. 

2  E 


434  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

content  with  the  foregoing  protective  measure,  added  a 
bounty  of  5s.  per  qr.  upon  the  export  of  corn  from  Eng- 
land.1 But  the  effect  of  this  bounty  was  not  felt  for  several 
years,  for,  fortunately,  soon  after  the  passing  of  the  Bounty 
Act,  a  series  of  plentiful  harvests  occurred,  and  corn  was 
very  cheap.2  There  were  consequently  loud  outcries  from 
the  landlords  about  agricultural  distress,  which  merely  meant 
that  the  people  at  large  were  enjoying  cheap  food.  The 
aim  of  the  bounty  on  corn  had  been  to  raise  prices  by 
encouraging  its  export,  and  thus  rendering  it  scarcer  and 
dearer  in  England.3  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  had  the  opposite 
effect,  for  it  served  as  a  premium  upon  which  the  wheat- 
grower  could  speculate,  and  thus  induced  him  to  sow  a 
larger  breadth  of  his  land  with  wheat.  The  premium  upon 
production  caused  producers  to  grow  more  than  the  market 
required,  and  so  prices  fell.4  Thus,  happily  for  the  con- 
sumer, the  Corn  Laws  and  the  bounty  were  harmless  during 
the  greater  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,6  for  farmers 
competed  one  against  the  other  sufficiently  to  keep  down 
prices,  and  with  a  small  population  the  supply  was  generally 
sufficient  to  meet  the  demand.  But  the  inevitable  Nemesis 
of  protective  measures  came  at  the  end  of  the  century, 
when  population  was  growing  with  unexampled  rapidity,  and 
required  all  the  corn  it  could  get.  Then  the  prices  of  corn 
rose  to  a  famine  pitch,  while  the  duty  upon  its  importation, 
even  when  it  was  lowered,  prevented  it  coming  into  the 
country  in  sufficient  quantities. 

By  a  law  of  1773,  however,  the  importation  of  foreign 
wheat  was  allowed  when  English  wheat  was  more  than  48s. 
per  qr.6  In  1791  a  duty  of  24s.  3d.  was  imposed  as 
long  as  English  wheat  was  less  than  50s.  a  qr. ; 7  if  English 
wheat  was  over  50s.  the  duty  was  2s.  6d.  The  landed 

1  The  1  William  and  Mary,  §  1,  c.  12. 

2  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation,  p.  377. 

8  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV.,  ch.  v.  (Vol.  II.,  115). 
4  Rogers,    Economic  Interpretation,  p.  378,  who  instances  the  similar 
result  in  the  case  of  the  premium  on  beet  sugar  abroad. 
8  76.,  p.  378. 

6  The  13  Geo.  HI.,  c.  43 ;  cf.  Adam  Smith,  Wealth  of  Nations,  Bk.  IV., 
ch.  v.  (Vol.  II.,  p.  119). 

7  By  the  31  Geo.  HI.,  c.  30. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  435 

interest,  however,  was  not  satisfied  yet.  In  1804  foreign 
corn  was  practically  prohibited  l  from  importation  if  English 
wheat  was  less  than  63s.  a  qr.  ;  in  1815  the  prohibition 
was  extended 2  till  the  price  of  English  wheat  was  80s.  a 
qr.  Then  came  the  agitations  and  riots  of  1817-19,  after 
which  the  country  sank  into  despair  till  the  formation  8  of 
the  Anti-Corn  Law  League  in  1839.  During  the  operation 
of  these  laws  the  landlords  received  enormous  rents,4  so 
high,  in  fact,  that  with  all  the  aid  of  artificial  legislation, 
farmers,  except  in  good  years,  could  hardly  pay  them,  and 
agriculture  was  often  much  distressed.6  But  meanwhile  the 
mass  of  the  people  was  frequently  on  the  verge  of  starva- 
tion, and  at  length  the  country  perceived  that  things  could 
not  be  allowed  to  go  on  any  longer  in  this  way.  The 
manufacturing  capitalists  of  the  day  supported  the  leaders 
of  the  people  in  their  agitation,  for  they  hoped  that  cheap 
food  might  mean  low  wages.6  By  their  aid  the  landed 
interest  was  overcome,  and  in  1846  the  Corn  Laws,  by  the 
efforts  of  Cobden  and  his  followers,  were  finally  repealed. 
Nevertheless  the  British  farmer  and  his  landlords,  forgetting, 
it  seems,  the  days  when  they  got  high  prices  by  the  starva- 
tion of  the  poor,  still  frequently  clamour  for  the  re-imposition 
of  the  incubus  of  protection. 

§  245.  Agriculture  under  Protection. 

These  years  of  Protection  (1812-1845)  comprised,  in 
fact,  one  of  the  most  disastrous  periods  through  which 
British  agriculture  has  ever  had  to  pass.  The  inflated 
prices  created  by  the  Continental  War  not  only  caused  an 
enormous  rise  in  rent,  but  also  a  more  luxurious  and  corn- 

1  By  the  44  Geo.  HI.,  o.  109. 

8  By  the  55  Geo.  III.,  c.  26.    By  the  3  Geo.  IV.,  c.  60,  the  price  for  duty 
was  reduced  to  70s.  a  qr. 

•  For  this,  see  Morley's  Life  of  Cobden,  ch.  vi. 

*  Porter,  quoted  above,  p.  428. 

8  The  distress  of  agriculturists  in  this  period  is  carefully  detailed  in 
various  Reports,  and  the  whole  subject  has  been  ably  dealt  with  by  L  8. 
Leadam  in  his  book,  What  Protection  doe»  for  the  Farmer  and  Labourer 
(1893).  For  the  period  1812-1845  see  also  Prothero,  Pionttn 
Farming,  p.  87  sqq. 

6  Cf.  Toynbee,  Industrial  Kevolution,  p.  207. 


436  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

fortable  mode  of  living  among  the  higher  agricultural  classes  ; 
but  when  the  war  was  finally  brought  to  a  close  by  the 
Peace  of  1815,  there  was  a  sudden  fall  in  prices  that  caused 
widespread  trouble.  The  majority  of  landowners  refused 
to  reduce  their  rents,  and  many  farmers  were  in  consequence 
ruined.  Hence  arose  the  cry  for  more  stringent  Protective 
laws,  and  these  were  duly  passed.1  Encouraged  by  these 
enactments,  farmers  went  on  growing  more  corn  than  was 
necessary,  in  hopes  that  the  former  high  prices  would  now 
be  kept  up  artificially  ;  and,  of  course,  they  were  inevitably 
doomed  to  the  disappointment  that  awaits  all  ill-considered 
legislation.  Rent  was  paid,  but  it  was  paid  out  of  capital, 
not  out  of  profits  ;  and  agricultural  distress  grew  more  and 
more  bitter.  Select  Committees  and  Commissions  sat  to 
inquire  into  it  in  1814,  and  in  1821  and  1822  ;  they  sat 
again  in  1835  and  1836  ;  and  terrible  evidence  of  the 
widespread  ruin  of  many  farmers  was  brought  before  them.2 
It  was  shown  that  since  1790  rents  had  increased  some  70 
per  cent.,  and  yet  distress  was  prevalent  in  all  agricultural 
districts.3  The  last  ten  years  of  this  unfortunate  period, 
however,  were  more  prosperous  than  those  which  had  gone 
before,  partly  because  of  the  action  of  the  New  Poor  Law 4 
and  the  Tithe  Commutation  Act,5  but  chiefly,  no  doubt, 
owing  to  the  marked  improvements  that  were  made  in 
farming.  Of  these  improvements  it  is  now  time  to  speak. 

§  246.  Improvements  in  Agriculture. 

The  advance  made  between  the  years  1812  and  1845  is 
remarkable,  in  view  of  the  great  distress  which  undoubtedly 
prevailed  among  agriculturists  at  the  time.6  The  first,  and 
possibly  the  most  important,  of  these  was  the  greater  atten- 
tion paid  to  the  drainage  of  agricultural  land,  a  subject 

1  Especially  in  1815  by  the  55  George  III.,  c.  26. 

2  This  evidence  is  conveniently  summarised  in   What  Protection  does  for 
the  Farmer  and  Labourer,  by  L  S.  Leadam,  pp.  5,  33,  and  passim.    See  also 
Prothero,  Pioneers,  p.  87. 

3  Prothero,  u.  «.,  p.  87.  *  The  4  and  5  William  IV.,  c.  76  (1834). 
5  The  6  and  7  William  IV.,  c.  71  (1836). 

8  See  Prothero,  Pioneers  of  English  Farming,  pp.  95,  96,  for  the  fol- 
lowing. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  437 

discussed  as  far  back  as  1641  by  Blith,  and  strongly  re- 
commended by  Arthur  Young.  One  of  the  first  farmers  to 
appreciate  the  importance  of  proper  drainage  was  James 
Elkington,  a  Warwickshire  man,1  whose  services  were  so 
markedly  useful  to  his  county  that  the  Government  gave 
him  a  grant  of  £1000  in  recognition  thereof.  But  it  was 
Smith  of  Deanston8  who  proceeded  in  a  really  scientific 
manner,  and  from  1823  and  1834  onwards  his  suggestions 
were  widely  followed.  The  importance  of  the  subject  was 
recognised  by  Parliament,  and  loans  for  drainage  purposes 
were  allowed  by  the  Act8  of  1846. 

Next  to  drainage  comes  the  introduction  of  science  into 
the  use  and  application  of  manures.  The  chemical  nature 
of  the  various  soils,  and  the  fertilisers  which  are  most  suit- 
able for  them,  were  now  more  carefully  studied.  From  about 
1835  nitrate  of  soda  and  guano  began  to  be  used.4  In 
1840,  Liebig,  the  great  German  chemist,  recommended  the 
use  of  superphosphate  of  lime,  and  Sir  J.  B.  Lawes  in 
England  showed  how  this  could  be  obtained  by  dissolving 
bone-dust  in  sulphuric  acid.6  Then  phosphates  and  am- 
moniacal  manures  were  gradually  introduced  ;  and  marked 
strides  were  made  by  the  beneficial  action  and  inter-action 
of  good  drainage  and  suitable  fertilising  agents.  Nor  must 
we  omit  the  advance  made  in  agricultural  implements  and 
machines,  such  as  Small's  plough,  the  sub-soil  plough, 
Meikle's  threshing  machine,  and  the  drilling  machine  c — all 
of  which  have  greatly  assisted  agricultural  operations. 
More  attention  was  also  paid  now  to  the  proper  cultivation 
of  artificial  grasses,  agricultural  plants,  and  the  selection  of 
seeds.  The  rearing  and  breeding  of  stock  was  carried  on 
more  scientifically,  and  the  oil-cakes  and  other  artificial 
foods,  formerly  introduced  by  Coke  of  Holkham,7  were  more 

1  Prothero,  Pioneers  qf  English  Farming,  p.  96. 

1  Ib.,  p.  97.  •  Ib.,  p.  98.  *  /&.,  p.  99. 

8  Ib.,  p.  100.  The  value  of  bones  for  manure  is  said  to  have  been  dis- 
covered as  early  as  1772  by  a  Yorkshire  foxhunter  when  clearing  out  his 
stables  (Prothero,  Pioneers,  p.  80).  According  to  Porter  (ProyrtM  of  the 
Nation,  i.  149),  bones  were  occasionally  used  for  this  purpose  about  1800, 
but  did  not  come  into  general  use  till  1820. 

•  Prothero,  Pioneer*  of  English  farming,  p.  100. 

7  Prothero,  Pioneers,  p.  80. 


438  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

and  more  widely  used  for  cattle.  This  general  advance  in 
care  and  skill  was  greatly  assisted  by  the  work  of  the  Royal 
Agricultural  Society,  which  was  founded  in  1838,  and  held 
its  first  meeting  the  following  year  in  Oxford,1  the  home  of 
movements  which  have  usually  been  of  a  somewhat  dif- 
ferent character  from  the  operations  of  agriculture.  The 
greater  facilities  of  transit  afforded  by  the  introduction  of 
railways,  canals,  and  steam  navigation  should  also  be  noted 
as  contributing  to  the  success  of  the  farmer,  by  enabling 
him  to  bring  his  produce  more  readily  to  market,  and  it 
became  no  longer  necessary  for  one  parish  to  starve,  while 
another  in  a  different  part  of  the  country  had  to  allow  its 
surplus  produce  to  rot.2 

Altogether,  therefore,  English  agriculture  made  great 
strides  in  the  years  before  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws 
(1846) ;  and  although  after  that  repeal  many  persons  pre- 
dicted ruin  to  the  farmer,  he  continued  to  prosper.  The 
fact  was  that  the  enormous  development  of  trade  and 
population,  the  stimulus  given  to  all  kinds  of  commerce  by 
the  use  of  steam,  not  only  as  a  locomotive  power  but  also 
for  driving  machinery,  and  the  greater  interchange  of  pro- 
ducts due  to  modern  facilities  of  transit,  all  had  a  beneficial 
effect  upon  the  farmer.  He  shared  also,  in  another  way, 
in  the  general  increase  of  trade  and  prosperity,  for  the 
population  of  England  since  1840  has  not  only  increased 
in  actual  numbers,  but  has  taken  to  eating  far  more  of  the 
farmers'  produce  than  ever  it  did  before.  The  consump- 
tion of  butter  per  head  of  the  United  Kingdom  was  only 
1-05  Ibs.  in  1840,  whereas  in  1892  it  was  614  Ibs.;  of 
cheese  the  figures  are  0'92  Ibs.  in  the  earlier  date,  and 
5  '8 6  Ibs.  in  the  later  ;  of  bacon  O'l  Ibs.,  as  compared  with 
13 '11  Ibs.  in  1892.3  Of  course  large  quantities  of  produce 
now  come  from  abroad,  but,  even  allowing  for  this,  it  will 
be  seen  that  a  tremendous  increase  must  have  taken  place 
in  the  consumption  of  the  produce  of  British  farms.  In 
fact,  English  agriculture  was  in  a  very  flourishing  condition 
in  the  "  fifties  and  sixties,"  reaching  its  most  favourable  point 

1  Prothero,  Pioneers,  p.  101.  2  Ib.,  78. 

8  Leadam,  What  Protection  does  for  the  Farmer  and  Labourer,  p.  81. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  439 

about  the  time  of  the  Franco-German  war  (1871-73).  But 
after  that  it  began  to  decline,  and  has  continued  to  do  so 
for  a  period  of  twenty  years,  though  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  now  (1895)  the  depression  has  passed  its  most  acute 
•Mgt, 

§  247.   The  Depression  in  Modern  Agriculture. 

The  causes  of  this  modern  collapse  in  English  agriculture 
are  many  and  varied,  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  to 
a  large  extent  agriculture  has  only  suffered  in  common  with 
the  other  industries  of  the  country,  from  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  separate  it  altogether.  Yet,  we  may  distinguish 
two  causes,  which,  more  than  any  others,  have  tended  to 
this  depression,  and  these  are,  in  the  first  part  of  the 
period,  unfavourable  seasons,  and,  in  the  second,  low  prices 
and  foreign  competition.  The  autumn  of  1872  was  incle- 
ment, and  the  following  spring  unfavourable,  so  that  the 
good  effects  of  the  fine  harvest  weather  of  1873  were 
neutralised.1  The  year  1874  was  the  last  of  a  cycle  of 
prosperous  seasons.  From  1875  to  1877  the  farmer  had 
to  contend  against  a  succession  of  bleak  springs  and  rainy 
summers,2 — weather  that  produced  short  cereal  crops  of 
inferior  quality,  causing  mildew  in  wheat,  mould  in  hops, 
and  blight  in  other  cases,  while  sheep-rot  and  cattle  disease 
became  very  prevalent.  The  British  farmer,  thus  enfeebled 
by  bad  seasons,  was  further  attacked  by  an  alarming  increase 
in  foreign  competition,  due  partly  to  the  increase  of  the 
wheat  area  in  India  and  America,  and  perhaps  even  more 
largely  to  the  constantly  growing  facilities  for  transport  of 
agricultural  produce  from  distant  lands.  Meanwhile,  his 
own  harvests  were  going  from  bad  to  worse.  The  summer 
of  1879,  sunless  and  ungenial,  caused  the  worst  harvest  of 
the  century  ;  and  though  since  1882  the  seasons  have  been 
less  uniformly  unfavourable,  the  effects  of  the  previous  lean 
years  have  been  hard  to  neutralise.3 

Moreover,  the  stress  of  foreign  competition  has  been  very 

1  Prothero,  in  Did.  Pol.  Econ.,*.  v.  Ayricvliural  Dtprwion,  Vol.  I., 
p.  564. 
3  For  the  above,  see  Prothero,  u.  «. 


440 


INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 


severe.  Between  1866  and  1883  the  values  of  agricul- 
tural imports  from  abroad  rose  from  £77,069,431  to  double 
that  figure,  i.e.,  £157,520,797.  Again,  in  1851,  the 
supply  of  wheat  was  317  Ibs.  per  head  per  annum  for  a 
population  of  some  27  millions,  and  it  cost  £53,500,000  ; 
but  in  1885  the  supply  was  400  Ibs.  per  head  for  some 
36  million  people,  and  yet  the  cost  was  reduced  to 
£43,700.000.  No  doubt  the  consumers,  as  a  whole,  pro- 
fited by  the  low  price  of  bread,  but,  nevertheless,  the  agri- 
culturist was  being  steadily  ruined ;  and  it  has  been 
seriously  doubted  by  some  economists  whether  the  wider 
interests  of  the  nation  at  large  do  not  suffer  when  the 
cheapness  of  food  proves  so  disastrous  to  a  respectable  and 
important  class.1  The  fall  in  prices  may  be  further  seen 
from  the  following  table 2 : — 


TEA*. 

Wheat, 

per  qr. 

Barley, 
per  qr. 

Cattle, 
per  stone 
of  8  Ibs. 

Sheep, 
per  stone 
of  8  Ibs. 

S.     d. 

s.    d. 

s.    d.     s.    d. 

s.    d.     a.  d. 

1873  ... 

58     8 

40    5 

5    Ito6    4 

5    8to6  11 

1883  

41     7 

31  10 

4    3  „  6     1 

5    6  „  7    3 

1893  

26    4 

25    7 

2  10  „  4    9 

3    8  „  5    5 

1894  

22  10 

24    6 

2    6  ,,4    5 

3    8  „  6    1 

1895  (Sept.  28) 

23    0 

24    8 

2    9  ,,4    6 

4    1  ,,5    9 

Other  produce  has  fallen  in  proportion.  Thousands  of 
farmers  have  been  ruined,  agriculture  generally  has  suffered 
a  severe  and  prolonged  depression,  and  much  arable  land 
has  been  laid  down  again  as  pasture,3  while  some  has  gone 
altogether  out  of  cultivation.*  Meanwhile  political  false 
prophets  have  been  going  about  with  their  usual  nostrums, 
and  the  flags  of  Protection  and  even  of  Bi-metallism  are 
being  waved  before  the  bewildered  eyes  of  the  British 
farmer,  as  if  they  were  signals  of  salvation.6 

1  Prothero,  Diet.  Pol.  Econ.,  i.  565,  from  which  the  above  figures  are 
taken. 

8  See  Hazell's  Annual  for  1895,  p.  15,  and  1896,  p.  11. 

3  See  the  Agricultural  Returns.     The  arable  land  of   1893  was  about 
2,000,000  acres  less  than  in  1873  (cf.  also  Hazell's  Annual,  1895). 

4  Notably  in  Essex. 

8  This  sentence  was  first  written  in  1890.     There  is  no  reason  to  alter  it 
in  1895. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  441 

§  248.  The  Causes  of  the  Depression. 

Now  it  is  perfectly  obvious,  to  an  impartial  observer  of 
economic  facts,  that  an  industry,  so  flourishing  as  English 
agriculture  was  not  very  many  years  ago,  could  not  have 
suffered  so  severe  a  collapse  unless  there  had  been  some 
great  underlying  cause,  besides  the  ordinary  complaints 
of  bad  harvests  and  foreign  competition  already  referred 
to.  These  must  have  due  weight  given  them,  but  bad 
harvests  are  not  peculiar  to  England,  and  foreign  com- 
petition, however  keen  it  may  be,  has  first  to  overstep  a 
very  considerable  natural  margin  of  protection  in  the  cost 
of  carriage.  It  costs,  for  instance,  according  to  a  high 
American  authority,  9s.  per  quarter  to  transport  American 
wheat  from  Chicago  to  London.1  It  is  clear  that  besides 
these,  there  must  have  been  other  influences  of  consider- 
able importance  to  cause  English  agriculture  to  have  been, 
in  spite  of  its  apparent  prosperity,  in  so  insecure  a  position 
that  it  should  have  sunk  to  the  depressed  condition  in  which 
it  even  now  remains.  We  have  not  to  look  far  for  the 
causes.  There  are  several,  and  one  among  them  is  the 
lack  of  agricultural  capital. 

But  how,  it  may  naturally  be  asked,  has  it  come  about 
that  the  English  farmer,  after  the  very  favourable  period 
before  the  depression,  should  thus  suffer  from  a  lack  of 
capital,  a  lack  which  renders  it  almost  impossible  for  him 
to  work  his  land  properly  ?  The  answer  is  simple.  His 
capital  has  been  greatly  decreased,  surely,  though  not 
always  slowly,  by  an  enormous  increase  in  his  rent  The 
landlords  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  has  been  said, 
perhaps  somewhat  too  severely,  made  the  English  farmer 
the  foremost  agriculturist  in  the  world,  but  their  successors 
of  the  nineteenth  have  ruined  him  by  their  extortions.* 
Such,  at  any  rate,  is  the  verdict  of  eminent  agricultural 
authorities ;  and  landowners  have  been  compelled,  for 
their  own  sake,  to  reduce  the  exorbitant  rents  which  they 

1  Mr  David  Wells,  quoted  by  Thorold  Rogers,  in  The.  Relation*  of  Economic 
Science  to  Social  and  Political  Action,  p.  12.     Mr  Edward  Atkinson  put*  it 
at  1  Is.     This  is  about  |d.  per  ton  per  mile. 

2  Thorold  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  of  History,  p.  182. 


442  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

received  in  former  years.  Unfortunately,  too,  the  attention 
of  other  classes  of  the  community  has  been,  till  lately, 
diverted  from  the  condition  of  our  agriculture  by  the 
prosperity  of  our  manufactures.  But  these  two  branches  of 
industry,  the  manufacturing  and  the  agricultural,  are  closely 
interdependent,  and  must  suffer  or  prosper  together.  It 
is  possible,  also,  that  there  are  certain  economic  theories 
which  have  helped  the  decline  of  English  agriculture. 
They  are  the  Ricardian  theory  of  rent,  and  the  dubious 
"  law  of  diminishing  returns." l  They  have  made  many 
people  think  that  this  decline  was  inevitable,  and  have 
diverted  their  attention  from  a  very  important,  though 
not  the  only,  cause  of  the  trouble — namely,  the  increase  of 
rent.  But  putting  the  possible  effect  of  these  theories 
aside,  we  may  employ  ourselves  more  profitably  in  looking 
at  the  facts  of  the  case.  It  has  been  mentioned  before, 
that  in  Tull's  time,  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  average  rent  of  agricultural  land  was  7s.  per 
acre,  and  by  Young's  time,  towards  the  close  of  the  century, 
it  had  risen  to  10s.  per  acre.2  Diffused  agricultural  skill 
caused  an  increase  of  profits,  and  the  hope  of  sharing  in 
these  profits  led  farmers  to  give  competitive  rents,  which 
afterwards  the  landlords  proceeded  to  exact  in  full,  and 
frequently  to  increase.  The  farmers  were  enabled  to  pay 
higher  rents  by  the  low  rate  of  wages  paid  to  their 
labourers,3  a  rate  which  the  justices  tended  to  keep  down 
by  their  assessments.  In  1799  we  find  land  paying  nearly 
20s.  an  acre;  in  1812  the  same  land  pays  over  25s.  ;  in 
1830,  again,  it  was  still  at  about  25s.,  but  by  1850  it  had 
risen  to  38s.  8d.,  which  was  about  four  times  Arthur  Young's 
average.4  Indeed,  £2  per  acre  was  not  an  uncommon  rent 
for  good  land  a  few  years  ago  (1885),5  the  average  increase 
of  English  rent  being  no  less  than  26  \  per  cent,  between 

1 1  have  dealt  with  them  in  an  article  in  the    Westminster  Review, 
December  1888,  but  perhaps  their  importance  is  overrated. 

2  Both  Tull  and  Young  are  quoted  by  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  of 
History,  p.  176. 

3  Ib.,  p.  179  ;  and  cf.  Six  Centuries,  p.  492. 

4  Rogers,  History  of  Agriculture  and  Prices,  v.  29. 

5  W.  E.  Bear,  The  British  Farmer  and  his  Competitors,  p.  31.     The  cal- 
culation as  to  the  increase  in  rent  is  Mr  James  Howard's. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  443 

1854  and  1879.  Now,  such  rent  as  this  was  enormous, 
and  could  only  be  paid  in  very  good  years.  In  ordinary 
years,  and  still  more  in  bad  years,  it  was  paid  out  of  the 
farmer's  capital1  This  process  of  payment  was  facilitated 
by  the  fact  that  the  farmer  of  this  century  did  not  keep 
his  accounts  properly,  a  fruitful  source  of  eventual  evil 
frequently  commented  upon  by  agricultural  authorities,*  and 
obvious  enough  to  anyone  who  knows  many  farmers  person- 
ally ;  and,  also,  by  the  other  fact,  that  even  when  the 
tenant  perceived  that  he  was  working  his  farm  at  a  loss, 
the  immediate  loss  (of  some  10  or  15  per  cent.3)  involved  in 
getting  out  of  his  holding  was  heavy  enough  in  most  cases 
to  induce  him  to  submit  to  a  rise  in  his  rent  rather  than 
lose  visibly  so  much  of  his  capital.4 

The  invisible  process,  however,  was  equally  certain,  if  not 
so  immediate.  The  result  has  been  that  the  average  capital 
per  acre  now  employed  in  agriculture  is  only  about  £4  or 
£5,  instead  of  at  least  £10,  as  it  ought  to  be,5  and  the 
farmer  cannot  afford  to  pay  for  a  sufficient  supply  of  labour, 
so  that  the  agricultural  population  is  seriously  diminishing. 
Nothing  in  modern  agriculture  is  so  serious  as  this  decline 
of  the  rural  population,  and  we  must,  further  on,  devote  a 
few  words  to  a  consideration  of  the  agricultural  labourer  and 
the  conditions  of  his  existence.  But  before  doing  so  it  may 
be  well  to  point  out,  for  fear  of  misconception,  that  the  high 
rent  of  English  agricultural  land  is  not  the  only  cause  of 

1  Prothero,on  Agricultural  Depression,  in  Diet.  Pol.  Econ.,  L  564,  points 
out  that  even  after  1874,  "  the  last  of  a  cycle  of  prosperous  years,"  rent 
continued  to  rise  for  two  years  longer,  and  that  farmers  have  lost  their 
capital. 

*  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  471,  and  Relations  of  Economic  Science,  p.  17. 

*  Rogers,  Relations  of  Economic  Science,  p.  17. 

4  The  state  of  the  case  is  very  clearly  and  forcibly  put  by  Thorold 
Rogers  in  the  pamphlet  just  quoted,  p.  18. 

•76.,  p.  17.  Elsewhere  Rogers  (Six  Centurie*,  p.  471)  remark*  that 
Arthur  Young,  even  in  his  time,  set  down  £6  an  acre  aa  the  minimum 
capital  necessary  for  successful  agriculture,  which  is  equivalent  to  more 
like  £12  at  the  present  time.  Rogers  also  mentions  that  on  certain  land 
known  to  him  the  capital  was  (in  1878)  under  £6  an  acre.  My  own  calcula- 
tions on  this  head  will  be  found  in  the  Economist  of  April  28th,  1888,  and 
they  coincide  closely,  though  independently,  with  the  statement*  made  by 
Professor  Rotors. 


444  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

the  depression.  It  is  a  very  important  cause,  and  operates 
in  more  ways  than  are  usually  seen  on  the  surface,  nor  is  it 
any  argument  to  say,  as  some  have  done,  that  because  land 
will  not  pay  for  the  expense  of  farming,  even  when  it  is  let 
rent  free,  that  therefore  the  former  high  rent  had  nothing  to 
do  with  the  matter.  For  when  a  farmer  has  lost  all  his 
capital  in  paying  rent  when  he  was  not  earning  it,  he  is  not 
anxious  to  continue  the  experiment  even  at  a  reduction  of 
that  rent,  especially  when  he  knows  that,  if  successful,  he 
will  only  have  to  pay  more  rent  again  in  the  future.  But, 
apart  from  this,  the  causes  of  the  depression  are  manifold 
and  various.  Almost  chief  among  them  may  be  placed  a 
certain  lack  of  adaptability  to  changed  circumstances  which 
has  characterised  the  British  farmer  as  compared  with  his 
foreign  competitors.  This  is  very  noticeable  in  the  case  of 
dairy  fanning,  where  foreign  producers  have  rapidly  over- 
taken our  own  countrymen  in  supplying  the  British  home 
market  Many  an  English  farmer  has  gone  on  growing 
wheat  for  years  after  it  was  obviously  a  loss  to  him,  when 
he  might  gradually  have  introduced  some  other  crop.  Again, 
he  has  neglected  dairy  farming,  or  only  carried  it  on  on 
unscientific  principles,  while  foreigners  have  been  scientifi- 
cally perfecting  their  methods.  He  has  certainly  despised 
the  smaller  industries  of  the  farm,  such  as  poultry-rearing 
and  egg-producing,1  so  that  our  home  market  is  now  largely 
stocked  with  fowls  and  eggs  from  France,  Germany,  Den- 
mark, and  even  Italy.  Again,  as  a  nation,  we  have  paid 
too  little  heed  to  agricultural  education,  and  though  so- 
called  "technical  instruction"  is  now  given,  it  is  conducted 
in  many  places  in  a  most  chaotic  manner,  and  money  is 
lavishly  wasted  with  the  minimum  of  result.  Dairy  schools 
are  certainly  at  length  being  established,  but  not  before 
they  had  become  familiar  to  every  Danish  cowherd  and 
Danish  butter  was  ousting  our  own  from  the  home  market. 
Here,  as  elsewhere  in  our  educational  system,  the  State  has 
neglected  duties  which  every  other  great  European  nation 

1  It  is  only  in  the  last  two  years  (1895)  that  the  farmers  of  a  certain 
parish  which  I  know  well  in  Wiltshire  have  paid  attention  to  their  poultry, 
by  placing  fowl- houses  for  them  in  the  stubble  after  harvest. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  445 

has  long  since  taken  upon  itself,  so  that  our  British  farmers 
are,  like  our  British  mechanics,  the  most  sensible  and  yet 
the  most  ignorant  of  their  kind 

But  to  enumerate  all  the  causes  of  the  present  agricul- 
tural depression  would  exhaust  both  the  patience  of  the 
reader  and  the  industry  of  the  writer,  more  especially  as 
many  of  them  are  inextricably  implicated  in  the  general 
conditions  of  English  industry.1  Those  already  mentioned 
— high  rents  and  low  prices,  foreign  competition  and  domes- 
tic carelessness,  lack  of  capital  and  want  of  education — are 
possibly  among  the  chief.  Everyone  who  knows  much 
about  agriculture  will  add  others  from  his  own  experience, 
and  those  who  know  but  little  will  add  still  more.  It  is, 
therefore,  perhaps  better  to  consider  a  subject  which  is 
closely  connected  with  them,  and  of  dangerous  importance 
to  the  nation  at  large.  I  refer  to  the  serious  depopulation 
of  the  rural  districts. 

§  249.   The  Labourer  and  the  Land. 

It  has  been  previously  mentioned 2  that  the  Industrial 
Revolution  was  accompanied  by  an  equally  important  re- 
volution in  agriculture  :  the  main  features  of  the  agrarian 
revolution  being  the  consolidation  of  small  into  large  farms, 
the  introduction  of  new  methods  and  machinery,  the  en- 
closure of  common  fields  and  waste  lands,  and  discontinu- 
ance of  the  old  open-field  system,  and,  finally,  the  divorce 
of  the  labourer  from  the  land.  The  consolidation  of  farms 
reduced  the  number  of  farmers,  while  the  enclosures  drove 
the  labourers  off  the  land,  for  it  became  almost  impossible 
for  them  to  exist  on  their  low  wages  now  that  their  old 
rights  of  keeping  small  cattle  and  geese  upon  the  commons, 
of  having  a  bit  of  land  round  their  cottages,  and  other 
privileges,  were  ruthlessly  taken  from  them.*  They  have 
retreated  in  large  numbers  into  the  towns,  and  taken  up 
other  pursuits,  or  helped  to  swell  the  ranks  of  English 
pauperism.  Before  the  Industrial  and  Agrarian  Revolu- 
See  Prothero's  excellent  article  in  VoL  I.  of  Palgrave'«  Dictionary  of 
Political  Economy. 

•  Above,  pp.  343,  430. 

»  Above,  pp.  335,  408 ;  and  Prothero,  Pioneers,  dtc.t  p.  73. 


446  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

tion,  Arthur  Young,1  in  1769,  estimated  that  out  of  a 
total  population  of  8,500,000,  the  agricultural  class, 
"  farmers  (whether  freeholders  or  leaseholders),  their  ser- 
vants and  labourers,"  numbered  no  less  than  2,800,000 — 
i.e.,  over  one-fourth  of  the  total  population — and,  with  others 
interested  in  agriculture,  the  number  was  3,600,000.  The 
number  of  those  engaged  in  manufactures  of  all  kinds  he  puts 
at  3,000,000.  His  figures  may  be  taken  as  substantially 
correct,  though  perhaps  not  as  accurate  as  a  modern  census. 
Now  let  us  look  at  the  agricultural  population  of  more 
recent  years.  In  1871  the  number  of  wage-earners  in 
agriculture  was  just  under  one  million  (996,642)  in 
England  and  Wales.  In  1881  it  had  declined  further  to 
890,174,  and  in  1891  it  had  again  declined  2  to  just 
over  three-quarters  of  a  million  (798,912).  The  propor- 
tion that  these  wage-earners  bear  to  the  class  of  agricul- 
turists, as  a  whole,  is  73  per  cent.,  so  that  they  are  quite 
adequately  representative  of  the  general  rural  population. 
This  decline  in  absolute  numbers  in  twenty  years  is  start- 
ling enough,  but  it  is  still  more  so  when  we  take  the 
proportion  of  the  numbers  to  the  total  population  of 
England  and  Wales,  and  find  that  the  percentage  of 
agricultural  wage-earners  was  only  4 '34  in  1871,  3 '43 
in  1881,  and  as  low  as  2 '7 5  in  1891.  Even  if  we  include, 
besides  wage-earners,  the  whole  class  of  agriculturists,  we 
shall  find  that  the  proportion  has  sunk  from  the  one  person 
in  four  employed  in  agriculture  in  Arthur  Young's  time  to 
more  like  one  in  twenty -four.  There  is  in  these  figures 
much  cause  for  uneasiness,  not  only  for  the  economist,  but 
for  the  patriot  and  for  the  politician.  Nor  is  that  uneasiness 
lessened  by  the  fact  that  the  same  phenomenon  of  rural 
depopulation  may  also  be  seen  in  other  European  countries.3 
The  modern  rush  to  the  towns  is  not  a  healthy  sign,  nor 
can  any  nation  rest  on  a  firm  and  secure  basis  unless,  to  use 
a  rustic  metaphor,  its  roots  strike  deep  into  its  native  soil. 

1  Quoted  above,  p.  334. 

2  The  figures  are  from  the  Official  Reports  of  the  Census,  and  are  con- 
veniently summarised  in  HazelPs  Annual  for  1895. 

3  See  E.  G.  Ravenstein's  interesting  paper  in  Vol.  LII.  (1889),  p.  241,  of 
the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Statistical  Society. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  447 

§  250.   The  Condition  of  the  Labourer. 

But  not  only  have  the  numbers  of  the  agricultural  popu- 
lation decreased,  but  the  labourer  no  longer  has,  as  a  rule, 
any  share  in  the  land.  Certainly  the  agricultural  labourer, 
at  any  rate  in  the  South  of  England,  was  much  better  off 
in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  than  his  descendants 
were  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth.  In  fact,  in  1850  or 
so,  wages  were  in  many  places  practically  lower  in  purchas- 
ing power,  and  not  much  higher  in  actual  coin,  than 
they  were  in  1750.  But  meanwhile  almost  every  necessary 
of  life,  except  bread,  has  increased  in  cost,  and  more 
especially  rent  has  risen,  while  on  the  other  hand  the 
labourer,  as  we  have  seen,  has  lost  many  of  his  old 
privileges,  for  formerly  his  common  rights,  besides  provid- 
ing him  with  fuel,  enabled  him  to  keep  cows  or  pigs  and 
poultry  on  the  waste,  and  sheep  on  the  fallows  and  stubbles, 
while  he  could  generally  grow  his  own  vegetables  and 
garden  produce.  All  these  things  formed  a  substantial 
addition  to  his  nominal  wages.  From  1750  or  so  to  about 
1800  his  nominal  wages  averaged  7s.  6d.  or  10s.  a  week  ; 
in  1850  they  only  averaged  l  10s.  or  12s.,  although  in  the 
latter  period  his  nominal  wages  represented  all  he  actually 
received,  while  in  the  former  they  represented  only  part  of 
his  total  income.  Since  1850,  however,  even  agricultural 
wages  have  risen,  the  present  average  being  about  13s.  a 
week.2  This,  of  course,  represents  in  mral  districts  far  more 
than  the  same  amount  of  wages  would  in  a  town,  since  the 
agricultural  labourer  of  to-day  has  been  enabled  to  obtain 
allotments  for  his  own  use  in  many  places,  and  only  pays 
a  low  rent  for  his  cottage.  But  even  then  it  does  not 
represent  a  large  income,  and  though  there  is  more  than 
one  honest  South  Country  labourer  who  has  brought  up  a 
family  respectably  on  10s.  a  week,8  it  can  hardly  be 

1  Cf.  the  figurea  in  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  p.  510. 

*  The  average  weekly  wages  as  baaed  upon  thirty-eight  estimates  of  the 
mean  rate  for  all  the  districts  inquired  into  by  the  Assistant  Commissioners 
on  Agricultural  Labour  in  the  Labour  Commission  of  1891  was  about  13s.  5d. 
per  week.  The  average  rate  ascertained  by  the  Richmond  Commission  of 
1879-81  was  13s.  Id.,  and  the  estimate  for  1807-70  was  12s.  3d.  per  week. 

8  I  am  speaking  from  my  personal  acquaintance  with  such. 


448  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

contended  that  a  higher  rate  of  payment  would  not  have 
been  better  both  for  himself  and  for  his  employers.  At  the 
same  time,  it  cannot  be  denied  the  general  condition  of  the 
agricultural  labourer  is  far  better  now  than  it  was  twenty, 
or  even  fifty,  years  ago.  The  hours  of  work  have  been 
lessened,  and  machinery,  although  it  has  caused  displace- 
ment in  some  cases,  has  yet  relieved  the  labourer  of  much 
of  the  severe  work  which  he  had  then  to  perform.  In  many 
counties  the  wives  of  the  labourers  have  been  entirely 
emancipated  from  field  work  for  many  years  past,  though,  of 
course,  in  many  counties  also,  they  do  light  field  work  at 
harvest  time.  Greater  opportunities  for  education  have 
been  given,  and  the  dwellings  of  rural  labourers,  with  all 
their  defects,  are  generally  better  now  than  they  used  to 
be.  "  The  labourer  of  the  present  day,"  it  is  said,  "  who  is 
better  fed,  better  clothed,  better  housed,  than  his  father  was, 
may  not  be  fully  conscious  of  the  improvement  that  has 
taken  place,  because  his  ideas  have  expanded,  and  his  wants, 
like  those  of  persons  in  every  other  class,  have  grown ;  but 
none  the  less  he  lives  in  less  discomfort,  his  toil  is  less 
severe,  his  children  have  a  better  prospect  before  them,  and 
opportunities  which  he  himself  never  enjoyed."  l 

Such  is  a  fair,  though  not  a  roseate,  statement  of  the 
present  position,  and  at  first  glance  it  may  seem  satisfactory. 
But  when  we  come  to  consider  that,  after  all,  the  present 
tolerable  position  of  the  agricultural  labourer  is  an  improve- 
ment only  when  compared  with  the  depth  of  degradation 
reached  about  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
that  his  condition  had  till  then  been  steadily  declining,  we 
may  well  stop  and  ask  ourselves  whether  there  is  much 
cause  for  congratulation  in  the  fact  that  the  agricultural 
labourer  of  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  not  much 
worse  off  than  he  was  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ago.  Considering  the  vast  improvement  that  has 
taken  place  in  the  whole  of  our  social  and  economic 
standard  of  living,  and  in  the  opportunities  which  are  now 

1  Report  of  Mr  W.  C.  Little,  Assistant  Agricultural  Commissioner,  in  his 
Oeneral  Eeport  on  the  Agricultural  Labourer  to  the  Labour  Commission 
(June  20,  1894). 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  449 

opened  up  by  modern  culture,  it  is  doubtful  whether  we 
can  honestly  say  that  the  agricultural  labourer  has  had  his 
fair  share  of  them.  Statisticians  rejoice  because  he  has  for 
some  time  no  longer  retrograded,  but  has  even  advanced ; 
but  this  is  but  a  poor  advance  compared  with  that  of  the 
nation  as  a  whole.  However,  for  whatever  advance  that 
has  taken  place,  we  shall  do  well  to  be  thankful,  for  a  sturdy 
and  contented  peasantry,  where  it  exists,  is  the  best  back- 
bone for  a  progressive  nation. 

The  rise,  such  as  it  is,  is  due,  among  other  causes,  to  the 
formation  of  Trades  Unions,  the  leader  and  promoter  of 
which  among  agricultural  labourers  was  Joseph  Arch.  This 
active  and  energetic  man,  who  has  sat  in  more  than  one 
Parliament,  was  born  in  1826,  and  in  his  youth  and  middle 
age  saw  the  time  when  agricultural  labour  was  at  its  lowest 
depth.  Not  only  were  wages  low — being  about  10s.  or 
lls.  a  week — but  the  evils  of  the  factory  system  of  child 
labour  had  been  transferred  to  the  life  of  the  fields.  Phil- 
anthropists seem  to  have  overlooked  the  disgraceful  condi- 
tions of  the  system  of  working  in  agricultural  gangs,  under 
which  a  number  of  children  and  young  persons  were  collected 
on  hire  from  their  parents  by  some  overseer  or  contractor, 
who  took  them  about  the  district  at  certain  seasons  of  the 
year  to  work  on  the  land  of  those  farmers  who  wished 
to  employ  them.  The  persons  composing  the  gang  were 
exposed  to  every  inclemency  of  the  weather,  without  having 
homes  to  return  to  in  the  evening,  people  of  both  sexes 
being  housed  while  under  their  contract  in  barns,  without 
any  thought  of  decency  or  comfort,  while  the  children  often 
suffered  from  all  the  coarse  brutalities  that  suggested  them- 
selves to  the  overseer  of  their  labour.1  Their  pay  was  of 

1  For  gang  labour  see  the  Report  (Reports,  xii.,  1843)  of  the  Committee 
of  1843  on  this  subject.  The  worst  evils  are  said  to  have  been  corrected 
in  1816  by  the  56  Geo.  HI.,  c.  139  (Cunningham,  Growth  qf  Industry,  ii. 
663),  but  cf.  Rogers,  Six  Centuries,  pp.  511,  512. 

The  following  extract  from  one  of  the  Rev.  S.  Baring-Gould's  novel* 
gives  some  idea  of  the  conditions  of  gang  labour.  I  am  assured  by  the 
author  that  he  derived  the  incident  from  a  reliable  authority  in  the  district 
where  it  happened  :  "Twice  or  thrice  the  wheat  had  to  be  hoed,  and  tli-- 
hoers  were  women.  Over  them  the  farmers  set  a  ' ganger*  armed  with  an 
ox-goad,  who  thrust  on  the  lagging  women  with  a  prod  between  th« 
shoulder-blades." — Baring-Gould,  Cheap  Jack  Zita,  p.  214. 

'2  F 


450  INDUSTRY   IN   ENGLAND 

course  miserable,  though  gangs  flourished  at  a  time  when 
farmers  and  landlords  were  making  huge  profits.  But  the 
degrading  practice  of  cheap  gang-labour  was  defended  as 
being  necessary  to  profitable  agriculture ;  which  means  that 
tenants  were  too  cowardly  or  too  obtuse  to  resist  rents 
which  they  could  not  pay  except  by  employing  pauperised 
and  degraded  labour.  Amid  times  like  these  Joseph  Arch 
grew  up,  and  the  seed  of  Trade  Unionism  was  sown,  but  it 
was  not  till  1872  (at  which  time  it  will  be  remembered 
that  British  farmers  were  doing  very  well) l  that  the  agita- 
tion was  begun  which  resulted  in  the  formation  of  the 
National  Agricultural  Labourers'  Union.  The  difficulties  of 
organising  the  down-trodden  labourers  were  enormous,  but 
they  were  at  length  overcome  by  the  leaders  of  the  agitation, 
and  their  efforts  have  already  done  much  to  improve  the 
material  condition  of  their  members.  Wages  have  decidedly 
risen  since  the  agitation  began,  but  even  now  they  certainly 
cannot  be  called  high. 

§  251.   The  Present  Condition  of  British  Agriculture. 

It  remains  to  notice  briefly  the  causes  which  are  still 
influencing  our  agricultural  industry,  and  to  point  out  in 
what  direction  we  may  expect  a  revival  from  the  present 
state  of  depression.  Besides  the  fact  of  the  increase  of 
rents  up  to  1870  or  1875,  we  notice  an  increase  of  the 
foreign  competition  already  alluded  to — an  increase  which 
is  of  comparatively  recent  date.  Our  competitors  are  mainly 
Russia,  America,  and  last,  but  by  no  means  least,  India.2 
At  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War,  and  for  some  years  subse- 
quently, Russian  competition  ceased  to  exist.  Even  when 
it  began  again,  it  was  not  very  serious  as  long  as  it  stood 
alone,  for  America  had  not  yet  entered  the  field,  and  was 
prevented  from  doing  so  by  the  sanguinary  struggles  of  the 
Civil  War.  High  prices  for  grain  3  prevailed,  therefore,  till 
some  time  after  America  had  ceased  her  internal  conflict, 
and  it  was  only  quite  recently  that  much  grain  was  grown 
for  export  in  India.  But  since  1870  or  so  England  has 

1  Above,  p.  438.  8  See  the  Agricultural  Returns  for  recent  years. 

a  Aided  by  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  and  Australia. 


MODERN   AGRICULTURE  451 

been  supplied  with  grain  from  these  three  great  agricultural 
countries,  and  the  English  farmer,  no  longer  buoyed  up  at 
the  expense  of  the  rest  of  the  community  by  protective 
measures,  has  found  it  impossible  to  grow  wheat  at  a  profit 
under  the  old  rents.  The  consequence  has  been  the  ruin 
of  many  farmers,  and  a  terrible  loss  of  income  for  all  classes 
in  any  way  connected  with  agriculture.1  But  at  the  same 
time  rents  have  decreased  very  slowly  in  spite  of  the  fre- 
quent stories  that  are  heard  of  wholesale  reductions  by 
sympathetic  landlords.  This  may  be  seen  from  the  official 
returns.  The  annual  value  of  lands  assessed  under 
Schedule  A  in  the  United  Kingdom  was  highest  in  1879-80, 
when  it  was  £69,548,793.  It  had  decreased  to  £63,268,679 
in  1885-86,  and  still  further2  declined  to  £57,694,820  in 
1890-91.  But  it  is  surprising  to  find  that  even  this  latter 
figure  is  higher  than  the  gross  assessment8  of  1852-53, 
before  the  Russian  War,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  land  is 
not  worth  nearly  so  much  to  farm  as  it  was  then,  so  that 
it  is  difficult  to  resist  the  conclusion  that  the  fall  in  rents 
has  not  been  so  great  as  it  should  have  been  in  proportion 
to  the  fall  in  the  profits  of  the  farmer. 

In  course  of  time  it  is  certain  that  the  economic  action 
of  supply  and  demand  will  bring  rents  down  to  something 
like  their  commercial  value,  as,  indeed,  it  has  been  rapidly 
doing  in  some  places  lately  (1895) ;  meanwhile  the  English 
landlords,  as  an  eminent  agriculturist  remarks,  have  the 
choice  between  allowing  their  old  tenants  to  be  ruined  first, 
and  then  accepting  reduced  rents,  or  granting  reductions 
soon  enough  to  save  men  in  whom  they  have  hitherto  had 
some  confidence  as  tenants.4  It  will  be  necessary  also  to 
make  important  changes  in  the  laws  and  customs  of  land 

1  It  was  estimated  by  Sir  James  Caird  (Evidence  before  the  Commission 
on  Depression  in  Trade  in  1886)  that  the  loss  of  the  agricultural  community 
as  a  whole  in  annual  income  was  £42,800,000  as  compared  with  1876. 
(C.  4715,  Qu.  7673,  and  f.  7677,  7742,  7785). 

1  See  Bear,  The  British  Farmer  and  AM  Compelitora,  pp.  9,  10. 

*  The  assessment  for  Great  Britain  under  Schedule  B  was  £46,571.887. 
A  change  in  the  assessment  for  Ireland  renders  the  exact  comparison 
difficult,  but  it  is  obvious  that,  even  allowing  for  Ireland,  there  has  not 
been  so  great  a  fall  as  might  have  been  expected. 

«  W.  E.  Bear,  u.  a.,  p.  12. 


452  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

tenure,  so  that  our  farmers  may  have  complete  security  for 
their  capital  invested  in  improvements,  and  freedom  of 
enterprise  (e.g.,  in  cropping  and  tilling),  in  order  that  they 
may  do  their  best  with  the  land.  An  extended  system  of 
small  holdings  and  allotments1  (which  are  fortunately 
increasing  in  spite  of  high  rents),  guaranteed  by  a  thorough 
measure  of  Tenant  Right,  together  with  free  trade  in  land 
as  well  as  other  commodities,  would  do  much  to  place 
moderate  farms  within  the  reach  of  industrious  and  thrifty 
yeomen  and  labourers.  Greater  facilities  for  transit,  in- 
cluding the  encouragement  of  light  railways  and  rural 
tram  lines,  together  with  the  abolition  of  the  system  of 
preferential  railway  rates,  would  enable  producers  to  put 
their  produce  with  greater  ease  upon  the  home  market ; 
for  the  requirements  of  the  English  nation  guarantee  an 
enormous  and  steady  demand  at  home  for  every  scrap  of 
food-stuff  that  the  land  is  capable  of  producing.  The 
farmer  is  slow  to  adapt  himself  to  changed  conditions, 
but  a  profitable  future  is  yet  open  to  him,  even  if  he 
gives  up  wheat-growing,  and  betakes  himself  more  to  dairy- 
farming,  market-gardening,  and  what  may  be  termed  the 
minor  branches  of  agriculture.  But  it  may  not  be  neces- 
sary for  him  to  give  up  wheat  altogether,  since  foreign 
farmers  are  beginning  to  find  out  that  they  cannot  put 
wheat  on  the  English  market  at  the  present  low  prices. 
In  course  of  time  the  nation  will  probably  perceive  that 
it  is  desirable,  and  that  ultimately  it  will  be  profitable,  to 
recall  capital  and  labour  back  to  the  land  which  it  is 
evident  that  they  have  left;  and  that  it  is  the  height  of 
economic  folly  to  rely,  as  some  do,  upon  the  extension  of 
our  manufacturing  industries  to  counteract  agricultural 
depression.  Prosperous  agriculture  means  for  us  pros- 
perous manufactures,  and  from  an  economic  point  of  view 

1  The  steady  increase  in  allotments  is  shown  by  the  figures  of  British 
allotments  under  one  acre  :— In  1873,  246,398  ;  in  1888,  357,795  ;  in  1890, 
455,005.  Of  these,  the  greater  number  (441,024  in  1890)  were  in  England. 
Small  holdings  under  fifty  acres,  and  other  than  allotments,  have  also  in- 
creased since  1875  (see  Hazell's  Annual,  1895).  Mr  W.  C.  Little,  in  the 
Report  above  referred  to  (Royal  Commission  on  Labour,  June  20,  1894), 
states  that  the  rentals  of  allotments  are  very  high,  as  everyone  knows 
who  has  had  experience  of  their  working. 


MODERN  AGRICULTURE  453 

the  interests  of  the  plough  and  the  loom  are  identical. 
Neither  can  be  served  by  protective  tinkering.  Reforms  of 
a  totally  different  character  are  needed,  foremost  among 
which  is  a  widespread  reduction  of  rent,  and  a  general  re- 
arrangement of  the  relations  between  landlord  and  tenant,1 
together  with  the  adoption  of  the  best  methods,  both  in 
education  and  in  agricultural  practice,  of  our  Continental 
and  foreign  competitors.  It  is  on  the  face  of  it  ridiculous 
to  assert  that,  with  an  unequalled  demand  in  the  home 
market  for  all  he  can  produce,  the  English  farmer  cannot 
find  some  means  of  making  the  land  pay,  and  pay  well. 
But  before  he  can  do  this  he  must  spend  more  capital  upon 
it  than  he  has  lately  been  able  to  afford. 

1  Qf.  W.  E.  Bear,  The  British  Fanner  and  hia  Competitors,  pp.  12-17, 
and  throughout  the  book  generally.  For  the  advantages  possessed  by  the 
British  farmer  (the  chief  of  which  is  the  unequalled  home  market),  <j/'. 
Mr  James  Howard's  remarks  quoted  on  p.  18  of  the  same  book. 


MODERN    INDUSTRIAL    ENGLAND 

§  252.  The  Growth  of  our  Industry. 

WE  have  now  traced  the  industrial  growth  of  England 
from  the  diffused  beginnings  of  manufactures  and  agricul- 
ture in  primitive  times  to  the  more  settled  period  of  the 
manorial  system,  and  have  seen  how,  afterwards,  towns 
gradually  grew  up,  commerce  extended,  and  markets  arose, 
while  manufactures  became  organised  in  various  centres 
and  regulated  by  guilds.  We  have  seen  that  for  several 
centuries  the  backbone  of  our  national  wealth  was  the 
export  of  wool,  but  that  in  course  of  time  we  ceased  to 
export  it,  and  worked  it  up  into  cloth  ourselves,  thereby 
gaining  great  national  wealth.  We  have  seen,  too,  how  our 
foreign  trade,  after  its  petty  beginnings  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
made  a  new  advance  in  the  buccaneering  days  of  the 
Elizabethan  sea  captains,  and  then  rapidly  developed,  by 
means  of  the  various  great  trading  Companies,  till  England 
became  commercially  supreme  throughout  the  world.  From 
commercial  beginnings  we  traced  the  rise  of  our  Indian 
Empire,  and  the  growth  of  the  American  colonies.  Mean- 
while, at  home,  there  came  an  Industrial  Revolution,  which, 
happening  as  it  did  at  the  moment  that  was  politically 
most  favourable  to  its  growth,  gave  England  a  most 
advantageous  start  over  other  European  nations  in  manu- 
facturing industries  of  all  kinds,  and  thus  enabled  her  to 
endure  successfully  the  enormous  burdens  of  the  great 
Continental  war.  Now  comes  a  time  of  still  greater  pro- 
gress, economic  as  well  as  commercial,  for  the  old  restrictive 
barriers  to  trade  are  to  be  swept  away,  and  a  new  economic 
policy  is  to  be  inaugurated. 


1695 
INDUSTRIAL 

ENGLAND 

Skotrtna  Population. 


Scale  of  EnJiUh  Miles 
o    10  to  M  «o  10  n 


Manufacturing  districts  are  shown  by  slanting  lines,  large  manufacturing 
towns  by  black  circles ;  and  the  most  populous  counties  are  coloured  darker  than 
the  others.  It  will  be  noticed  that  population  since  1760  has  shifted  very  much  to 
the  North  and  North  West  of  England,  whilst  manufactures  are  far  more  con- 
centrated than  formerly.  (Compare  the  Map  opposite  page  880) 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       455 


§  253.  State  of  Trade  in  1820. 

If  we  now  endeavour  to  gain  some  idea  of  the  trade  of 
the  country  soon  after  the  war,  we  may  look  for  a  moment 
at  its  condition1  in  1820,  just  before  Free  Trade  measures 
were  begun.  The  official  value a  of  the  total  imports  was 
declared  to  be  £32,438,650,  while  the  exports  amounted  to 
£48,951,537.  This  gives  a  total  trade  of  only  £3,  15s. 
per  head  of  the  population  then  existing,8  whereas  in  1890 
the  proportion  was  no  less  than  £18,  6s.  per  head.*  The 
tonnage  of  shipping  entering  and  leaving  our  harbours  was 
about  4,000,000  tons,  of  which  2,648,000  tons  belonged  to 
the  United  Kingdom  and  its  dependencies.6  Steamers  were, 
of  course,  as  yet  unknown.  Professor  Leone  Levi  calculates 
the  trade  of  the  country  at  not  more  than  one-eighth  or 
one-ninth  of  what  it  is  at  the  present  time.  The  wealth 
and  comfort  accessible  to  the  people  in  general  was  much 
more  limited,  the  consumption  of  tea,  for  instance,  being 
only  1  Ib.  4  oz.  per  head,  and  of  sugar  1 8  Ibs.  a  head.*  In 
fact,  if  we  compare  the  £327,880,676  worth  of  our  exports 
in  1890  with  the  £48,951,537  worth  in  1820,  we  see  at 
once  how  gigantic  has  been  the  growth  of  our  trade.  In 
1891,  again,  the  imports7  were  £435,691,279,  which  is 
more  than  twelve  times  their  value  in  1820.  But  even  at 
the  beginning  of  the  century  England  was  far  ahead  of  her 

1  It  may  be  well  to  tabulate  briefly  the  figures  of  trade  for  the  forty 
years  previous  to  1820  (Palgrave's  Diet.  Pol.  Econ.,  i.  p.  344) : — 


YKA*. 

Imports. 

Export*. 

TOTAL. 

1770 

11,002,000 

12,142,000 

23,144,000 

1780 

9,956,000 

11,363,000 

21,319,000 

1790 

16,398,000 

17,636,000 

34,034,000 

1800 

28,258,000 

34,382,000 

62,640,000 

1810 

39,302,000 

48,439,000 

87,741,000 

2  Account*  and  Papers,  1833,  xli.  48. 

*  The  population  of  the  United  Kingdom  in  1821  included  12,000,236  in 
England  and  Wales,  and  6,802,000  in  Ireland— a  total  of  nearly  19,000,000. 
Accounts  and  Papers,  1852-63,  Ixxxv.  23. 

4  The  calculation  is  in  the  article  Commerce  in  Palgrave'i  Diet,  Pol. 
Econ.,  p.  339,  Vol.  I. 

•  Leone  Levi,  Hist.  British  Commerce,  p.  151.  *  /&.,  p.  15L 
7  See  the  article  on  Commerce  in  Diet.  Pol.  Econ,,  i.  339. 


456  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

old  rival  France,  for  French  imports  were  only  worth 
£8,000,000  in  1815,  and  her  exports  only  about  double 
that  amount,  or  less  than  half  England's  exports,  which  in 
that  year  rose  to  over  £58,624,550  (official  value).1 

§  2  5  4.    The  Beginnings  of  Free  Trade. 

The  year  1820  has  been  chosen  for  comparison,  not 
merely  as  showing  the  condition  of  our  trade  at  that  time, 
but  for  the  great  enunciation  of  Free  Trade  principles 
which  it  witnessed.  The  old  Mercantile  system  was  break- 
ing up,  and  the  ideas  of  Adam  Smith  were  bearing  fruit. 
A  new  era  of  commercial  policy  was  beginning.  For  in 
that  year  the  London  merchants  in  the  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce formulated  their  famous  Petition  praying  that  every 
restrictive  regulation  of  trade,  not  imposed  on  account  of 
the  revenue,  together  with  all  duties  of  a  protective  char- 
acter, might  be  at  once  repealed.2  At  last  the  teachings  of 
economists  were  being  put  into  practice  by  men  of  business. 
The  Edinburgh  Chamber  of  Commerce  sent  up  a  similar 
petition ;  a  Committee  was  appointed  in  Parliament  to 
investigate  the  wishes  of  the  petitioners  of  the  Northern 
and  the  Southern  capital ;  and  it  brought  in  a  report 3 
thoroughly  in  agreement  with  the  Free  Trade  principles  of 
the  merchants.  From  that  time  onward  these  principles 
were  gradually,  but  more  and  more  widely,  adopted.4  In 
the  following  year  Mr  Huskisson,  the  President  of  the  Board 
of  Trade,  proposed  the  first  measures  of  commercial  reform, 
and  one  by  one  the  restrictions  upon  our  trade  were 
removed.  The  most  important  of  the  new  measures  was 
the  gradual  alteration  6  of  the  old  Navigation  Laws,  finally 
culminating  in  their  total  repeal  in  1849.  It  was  also 
Huskisson  who,  in  1823,  passed  a  "Reciprocity  of  Duties 

1  This  is  for  the  U.  K. ,  but  of  course  the  greater  part  came  from  Eng- 
land ;  Accounts  and  Papers,  1830,  xxvii.  211,  and,  for  French  imports,  cf. 
Levi,  «.  s.,  p.  152. 

2  Leone  Levi,  History  of  British  Commerce,  pp.  150-153. 

3  The  report  was  presented  on  July  18th,  1820. 

4  An  excellent  short  account  of  the  change  of  English  commercial  policy 
from  1815  to  1860  is  given  in  Prof.  Bastable's  Commerce  of  Nations,  ch.  vi. 

5  By  a  series  of  five  acts,  all  passed  in  1822,  viz.  :  the  3  Geo.  IV.,  c.  41, 
c.  42,  c.  43,  c.  44,  c.  45 ;  cf.  Craik,  British  Commerce,  iii.  234,  235. 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       457 

Bill,"  by  which l  English  and  foreign  ships  had  equal  advan- 
tages in  England  whenever  foreign  nations  allowed  the  same 
to  English  vessels  in  their  ports.  The  commerce  of  our 
colonies  was  thus  thrown  open,  under  certain  restrictions,  to 
other  nations.  In  order  to  promote  free  trade  in  our  manu- 
facturing industries,  he  reduced  the  duties  on  silk  and  wool  * 
in  1824,  and  in  the  same  year  the  Act  fixing  wages  for  silk 
weavers  was  repealed.8 

It  is  true  that  in  the  period  1821  to  1830  the  foreign 
trade  of  the  United  Kingdom  did  not  exhibit  much  material 
improvement,  but  still  there  was  a  steady  increase.  The 
official  value  of  imports*  rose  from  £30,000,000  to 
£46,000,000,  and  the  value  of  British  manufactures*  ex- 
ported from  £40,000,000  to  £60,000,000.  But  the 
declared  value  of  exports  remained  fairly  steady  at  about 
£37,000,000.  Yet  in  the  United  Kingdom  itself  trade 
was  growing  rapidly,6  and  the  increase  of  wealth  gave  an 
opportunity  for  a  general  diminution  of  taxes,  so  that  our 
sorely  strained  finances  were  set  in  order. 

Many  of  the  injurious  duties  upon  raw  materials  and 
articles  of  British  manufacture,  as  e.g.,  those  on  raw  silk, 
coal,  glass,7  paper,  and  soap,  were  taken  off,  to  the  great 
advantage  of  our  manufacturing  industries.  The  crisis  of 
1837,  however,  and  the  commercial  depression8  which 

1  The  3  and  4  Geo.  IV.,  c.  37.  In  accordance  with  this  Act,  commercial 
treaties  were  made  in  1824  with  the  Netherlands,  Prussia,  and  Denmark ; 
in  1825  with  the  Hansa  Towns ;  in  1826  with  France  (for  ten  years)  and 
Mexico  ;  and  in  1829  with  Austria.  The  trade  with  the  United  States  had 
been  put  on  a  reciprocal  footing  in  1815.  Cf.  Craik,  British  Com- 
merce, iii.  237. 

8  See  M'Culloch's  Commercial  Diet.  (1844),  «.  v.  silk  and  woof. 

3H  ?    a.  v.  silk. 

4  Ib.,  s.  v.  Imports  and  Exports  for  exact  figures. 

•  Yet  many  people  believed  it  was  decaying,  till  the  evidence  taken  by  a 
Committee  of  the  Commons  in  1833  disproved  this  idea.  Qf.  Tooks, 
History  of  Prices,  ii.  242. 

7  For  these  see  M'Culloch's  Dictionary  of  Comment,  ».  v.  coal,  glass,  fto. : 
and  see  his  most  interesting  tabular  statement  of  the  different  English 
customs  tariffs  of  1787,  1819,  and  1844,  s.  v.  Tariff. 

8  Tooke,  History  of  Prices,  iv.  289,  regards  this  as  comparatively  slight ; 
but  there  were  deficits  in  the  budgets  of  1838  (a  million  and  a  half),  1839 
(half  a  million),  1840  (a  million  and  a  half),  1841  (a  million  and  three- 
quarters),  and  in  1842  (two  millions) ;  Northcote,  Twenty  Ytars  of 

cial  Policy,  pp.  6,  12. 


458  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

followed  it,  together  with  continual  deficits  in  the  Budget, 
prevented  further  financial  reforms  for  a  few  years,  though 
eventually  circumstances  rendered  them  imperatively  neces- 
sary, and  Sir  Robert  Peel  courageously  faced  the  difficulties 
of  national  finance  in  1842. 

§  255.  Revolution  in  the  Means  of  Transit. 

Meanwhile,  too,  another  great  industrial  revolution  was 
being  effected.  The  introduction  of  railways,  steam  naviga- 
tion, and  the  telegraph,  has  done  almost  as  much  as  the 
great  inventions  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  revolutionise 
the  commerce  of  the  world.  The  Stockton  and  Darlington l 
railway  was  opened  in  1825,  and  the  Liverpool  and  Man- 
chester railway  line  in  1830.  The  first  steamboat  crossed 
the  Atlantic,  from  Savannah  to  Liverpool,  in  1825,  in 
twenty-six  days  ;  and  in  1838  ocean  passages  to  New  York 
by  steamship  were  also  accomplished  by  the  Great  Western 
from  Bristol,  and  the  Sirius  from  Cork,2  although  ever 
since  the  beginning  of  the  century  small  steamers  and  tugs 
had  been  used  for  coasting  purposes,  and  on  the  river 
Clyde.  In  1837  Cooke  and  Wheatstone  patented  the 
needle  telegraph,3  and  the  Electric  Telegraph  Company 
was  formed  in  1846  for  bringing  the  new  inventions  into 
general  use.  In  1840  the  penny  postage  came  into 
operation.4  Yet  more  recently  the  Suez  Canal  (1869)  has 
shortened  immensely  the  distance  to  the  East.  It  is 
obvious  to  all  how  incalculably  these  inventions  and 
appliances  have  aided  the  development,  not  only  of  Eng- 
lish trade,  but  of  the  commerce  of  the  whole  world.  But, 
owing  to  this  development,  commerce  has  become  no  longer 
national  so  much  as  international,  and  commercial  history 
loses  therefore  many  of  its  national  characteristics. 

1  M'Culloch,  Commercial  Diet.  (1844),  s.v.  "  Railroads,"  and  Leone  Levi, 
History,  p.  192. 

2  Ib.,  s.  v.  "  Steam  Vessels,"  and  Leone  Levi,  History  of  British  Com- 
merce, p.  196. 

3  Ib. 

4  M'Culloch,  Commercial  Dictionary,  s.  v.  "  Postage,"  gives  an  account 
of  its  introduction. 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       459 

§  256.  Modern  Developments. 

It  is  not  therefore  necessary,  in  the  limits  of  a  work  like 
this,  to  go  into  a  detailed  account  of  the  growth  of  com- 
merce since  these  great  modern  inventions.  There  is 
ample  material  for  the  student  in  larger  works  ;  and  the 
statistics  of  our  progress  may  be  consulted  in  the  invaluable 
pages  of  Mr  Giffen's  and  Professor  Leone  Levi's  books. 
Here  we  need  only  indicate  in  the  broadest  outlines  the 
chief  features  of  the  recent  developments  of  industry.  We 
have  followed  the  industrial  history  of  England  up  to  a 
period  more  prolific  in  commercial  events,  and  more  remark- 
able for  commercial  progress,  than  any  that  preceded  it 
The  experiments  and  tentative  measures  of  Mr  Huskisson 
and  other  statesmen  paved  the  way  for  a  bolder  and  more 
assured  policy  on  the  part  of  subsequent  governments,  till 
at  length  Sir  Robert  Peel,  compelled  to  some  extent  by  the 
deficits1  in  the  Budgets  of  former  years  to  adopt  some 
drastic  policy  of  finance,  attacked  seriously  the  great 
question  of  the  reform  of  the  tariff  in  his  now  famous 
Budget  of  1842.  In  this,2  tariffs  were  reduced  wholesale, 
but  soon  Peel  went  still  further.  Urged  on  by  the  Anti- 
Corn  Law  League,8  and  stimulated  by  a  great  famine  in 
Ireland  in  1845,  he  openly  adopted  the  principles  of  Free 
Trade.  Under  his  leadership  the  Corn  Laws  were  repealed  * 
(1846);  the  tariff  was  entirely  remodelled,  and  the  old  pro- 
tective restrictions  were  abolished,  Mr  Gladstone's  Budget6 
of  1853  being  particularly  memorable  in  this  direction.  A 
great  increase  of  trade  followed  the  inauguration  of  the 
policy  which  is  always  associated  with  the  famous  name  of 
Richard  Cobden,  and  this  increase  was  aided  by  various 
commercial  treaties  made  between  England  and  other 

1  Above,  p.  467,  note  8. 

«  By  the  Tariff  Act,  5  and  6  Victoria,  c.  47.  M'Cullooh  remarks :  "  The 
passing  of  this  Act  forms  an  important  era  in  the  history  of  commercial 
and  financial  legislation  "  (Commercial  Dictionary  (1844),  *.  r.  "  Tariff ") ; 
also  cf.  Prof.  Bastable,  Commerce  of  Nation*,  pp.  68-60. 

1  See  Morley,  Life,  of  Cobden,  oh.  xi. 

*  By  the  9  and  10  Victoria,  c,  22. 

8  It  reduced  or  abolished  imports  on  133  article* ;  Montgredien,  frtt 
Trade  (1881),  p.  171 ;  Bastable,  Commerce  of  Nation*,  pp.  63,  64. 


460  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

countries.1  Of  these  treaties,  the  most  noticeable  was  that 
with  France  (1860),  under  which  the  prohibitive  duties 
laid  upon  English  goods  were  reduced  by  France  to  pro- 
tective duties  of  fairly  moderate  amount,  while  England 
abolished  all  duties  on  the  import  of  manufactured 
goods,  and  greatly  reduced  those  on  wine  and  brandy.2 
This  treaty,  which  excited  much  controversy  at  the  time, 
as  raising  the  whole  question  of  our  commercial  relations 
with  foreign  countries,  was  negotiated  by  Cobden.3  In  his 
efforts  to  form  it  Cobden  was  actuated  by  the  hope  that 
such  treaties  might  lead  to  the  gradual  reduction  of  pro- 
tective duties  and  the  introduction  of  Free  Trade ;  but  in 
this,  as  in  other  cases,  the  enthusiasm  of  Free  Traders  has 
received  a  severe  blow,  and  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century  there  seems  almost  as  small  a  chance  of  universal 
free  trade  as  at  the  beginning  of  it.  Some  movement 
towards  that  enlightened  policy  has  certainly  been  made, 
but  progress  has  been  very  slow.  Many  wise  statesmen 
deliberately  continue  to  adopt  a  protective  policy  from  an 
idea — which  is  far  from  being  altogether  baseless — that 
such  a  policy,  though  economically  indefensible,  is  politi- 
cally advantageous.  Time  may  prove  that  politics  and 
economics  are  too  closely  allied  to  allow  political  ex- 
pediency to  counterbalance  economic  error  ;  meanwhile  it 
is  somewhat  doubtful  whether  protection,  even  from  the 
political  point  of  view,  is  worth  the  expense  which  it 
invariably  entails. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  the  wealth  of  England  has  un- 
doubtedly increased  enormously  in  the  last  fifty  years.4 
The  revolution  in  transit,  the  use  of  electricity  and  steam, 
the  freedom  of  our  country  from  protracted  warfare,  the 
growth  of  population,  and  the  spread  of  our  colonial  de- 
pendencies, have  all  contributed  to  this  result.  The 

1  See  list  in  Appendix  to  Leone  Levi's  British  Commerce. 

2  See  Morley's  Life  of  Cobden,  ch.  xxvii.     This  treaty  lasted  till  1872, 
when  it  was  denounced  by  Thiers,  but  was  renewed  in  1873,  and  so  far 
modified  in  1882  as  to  be  practically  useless. 

8  Morley's  Life  of  Cobden,  ch.  xxvii.  ;   also  cf.  Bastable,  Commerce  of 
Nations,  pp.  65,  66. 

4  See  Table  xxvi.  at  end  of  Farrer's  Free  Trade  v.  Fair  Trade. 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       461 


growth  of  commerce  may  be  seen  by  comparing  the  figures 
of  our  exports  and  imports  from  1855  to  1890,  from 
which  it  will  be  seen  that  the  most  rapid  increase  went  on 
until  1870  or  1872,  and  that  since  then  it  has  not  been 
so  remarkable.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  these  figures  are  values  only,  and  do  not  show 
the  actual  volume  of  trade.  It  is  beyond  doubt  that,  in 
spite  of  the  groans  of  pessimists,  the  foreign  commerce  of 
England  is  greater  now  than  it  was  in  1872,  though, 
owing  to  a  great  depreciation  in  prices,  the  values  may 
seem  lower;  and  that  the  actual  commercial  intercourse 
of  this  country  with  others  has  largely  increased.1 

TRADE  OF  THE  UNITED  KINGDOM.1 


Vriv 

EXFOBT*. 

Produce  of  U.K. 

Foreign  Produce. 

Total  Export*. 

1855 

143,542,850 

95,688,085 

21,003,215 

116,691,300 

1860 

210,530,873 

135,891,227 

28,630,124 

164,521,351 

1870 

303,257,493 

199,586,822 

44,493,755 

244,  134,738 

1880 

411,229,565 

223,060,446 

63,354,020 

286,414,466 

1885 

370,967,955 

213,044,500 

58,359,194 

271,403,694 

1887 

362,227,564 

221,414,186 

59,348,975 

280,763,161 

1890 

420,885,695 

263,531,585 

64,349,091 

327,880,676 

Even  before  1855,  however,  England  was  commercially 
far  ahead  of  other  countries.  The  great  Exhibition  of 
1851,  for  instance,  the  precursor  of  several  others,  showed 
to  all  the  world  her  immense  superiority  in  productive  and 
manufacturing  industries.  A  certain  stimulus  to  trade  was 
given  at  the  same  time  by  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California 
and  Australia  (1847-51),  which  supplied  a  much-needed 
addition  to  the  currency  of  the  world. 

§  257.   Our  Colonies. 

But  one  of  the  most  important  causes  of  the  growth  of 

British  trade  has  been  the  quite  modern  development  of  our 

1  See  the  article  Commerce  in  Palgrave's  Diet,  of  Pol.  Bean.,  L  839.     It 

is  there  stated  that  the  volume  of  our  foreign  commerce  is  30  per  cent. 

larger  than  in  1872. 

*  The  table  is  from  the  article  Commerce,  in  Palgrave's  Dictionary  o/ Pol. 
Econ.  (VoL  L).  Since  1864  " official "  values  were  abandoned  in  favour  of 
"  computed  "  values  for  imports  and  "  declared  "  values  for  export*. 


462  INDUSTRY   IN  ENGLAND 

colonies.1  Since  the  war  of  American  Independence,  Eng- 
land has  been  building  up  a  great  colonial  empire,  and  she 
has  been  wise  enough  not  to  attempt  again  to  levy  taxes  upon 
her  unwilling  offspring.  India  was  taken  over  from  the 
East  India  Company  (1858).  The  colonies  of  Canada  and 
the  Cape  were  gained  by  conquest ;  those  of  Australia  and 
New  Zealand  were  the  result  of  spontaneous  settlement.2 
The  two  former  were  captured  from  the  French  and  Dutch, 
but  of  South  Africa  at  least  we  have  not  yet  made  a 
commercial  or  even  a  political  success ;  nor  are  we  likely  to 
do  so  unless  we  have  the  sense  to  keep  on  good  terms  with 
the  original  settlers,  and  to  allow  no  misplaced  sentiment 
about  native  races  to  disturb  cordial  relations  between 
Europeans.  The  recent  activity  in  gold  mining  in  South 
Africa  will,  however,  have  a  beneficial  influence  upon  that 
branch  of  our  colonial  trade.  As  regards  our  Australasian 
colonies,  they  have  grown  far  beyond  the  expectations  of 
former  generations,  and  gained  for  themselves  entire  political 
freedom,  though  they  have  chosen  to  use  it  chiefly  in  carry- 
ing on  a  one-sided  war  of  hostile  protective  tariffs  against 
their  mother-country.3  As,  however,  they  owe  English 
capitalists  a  large  amount  of  money,  the  interest  on  which 
is  paid  in  colonial  goods,  there  is  a  strong  commercial  bond 
of  union  between  the  old  country  and  the  new ;  a  bond 
which  protectionists  in  England  are  strangely  anxious  to 
break,  by  placing  unnatural  obstacles  upon  the  payment  in 
goods  of  the  interest  due  upon  colonial  loans.  It  is  calcu- 
lated that  the  amount  of  capital 4  borrowed  from  English 
investors  by  the  colonies  is  some  250  millions  at  present 
outstanding,  and,  unless  some  violent  act  of  repudiation 
takes  place,  the  interest  alone  on  this  vast  sum  guarantees 

1  For  the  great  question  of  colonial  trade,  see  Fairer,  Free  Trade  v. 
Fair  Trade,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  publications  of  the  Imperial  Federa- 
tion League  on  the  other.     A  useful  summary  is  found  in  Palgrave's  Diet. 
Pol.  Eton.  (Art.  Trade  and  the  Flag,  by  A.  Caldecott,  i.  324-326) ;  also 
my  British  Commerce  and  Colonies,  ch.  xvii. 

2  See  Caldecott's  Colonisation  and  Empire  for  a  short  summary  of  colonial 
history,  and  Lucas's  Historical  Geography  of  the  British  Colonies. 

3  Cf.  Prof.  Bastable,  The  Commerce  of  Nations,  ch.  x. 

4  Paigrave's  Diet.  Pol.  Econ. ,  i.  324  ;  and  see  paper  on  Colonial  Indebted- 
ness, by  H.  F.  Billington,  in  Journal  of  Institute  of  Bankers,  March  1889, 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       463 

a  considerable  trade  between  borrowers  and  lender.1  But 
into  this  most  interesting  question  of  colonial  commerce,1 
involving  as  it  does  colonial  history  and  colonial  industry, 
there  is  not  space  to  enter  in  the  limits  of  the  industrial 
history  of  the  mother-country.  It  can  be  studied  at  length 
in  other  works,  and  here  is  only  noted  as  one  element  in 
the  enormous  foreign  trade  which  our  home  industries  have 
rendered  possible. 

§  258.  England  and  oilier  Nations'  Wars. 

But  besides  the  extension  of  our  colonial  relations,  Eng- 
lish trade  has  benefited  by  the  quarrels  of  her  competitors.3 
The  prostration  of  Continental  nations  after  1815  precluded 
much  competition  till  almost  the  middle  of  the  century,  and 
then  the  Crimean  War  broke  out  (1854-56).  As  mentioned 
before,  this  war  gave  a  great  stimulus  to  our  agriculture,4 
and  had  a  similar  effect  upon  our  manufactures.  The 
Indian  Mutiny  which  followed  it  did  not  much  affect  our 
trade,  but  it  rendered  necessary  the  deposition  of  the  East 
India  Company  and  the  assumption  of  government  by  the 
Crown  (1858),  and  thus  eventually  served  to  put  our  rela- 
tions to  that  vast  and  rich  empire  upon  a  much  more  satis- 
factory and  profitable  basis.  About  the  same  time  the 
Chinese  wars  of  1842  and  1857,  regrettable  as  they  were, 
established  our  commercial  relations  with  the  East  generally 
upon  a  firm  footing,  and  since  then  our  trade  with  Eastern 
nations  has  largely  developed.  Then  came  the  Civil  War 
in  America  (1861-65),  after  which  there  was  an  urgent 
demand  for  English  products  to  replace  the  waste  caused 
by  this  severe  conflict  The  Civil  War  was  succeeded  by  a 
series  of  short  European  wars,  chiefly  undertaken  for  the 
sake  of  gaining  a  frontier,  as  was  the  war  waged  by  Prussia 
and  Austria  upon  Denmark  (1864),  followed  by  another 
struggle  between  the  two  former  allies  (1866).  Then  in 
1870-71  all  Europe  was  shaken  by  the  tremendous  fight 

1  Of.  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation  qf  History,  339-340. 

•  Very  full  statistics  of  its  relation  to  British  and  foreign  trade  are  given  in 
Farrer's  Free  Trade  v.  Fair  Trade,  especially  in  Table  V.  of  the  Appendix. 

»  For  the  following  brief  summary,  cf.  Rogers,  Economic  Interpretation, 
pp.  292-294.  «/6.,p.  293. 


464  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

between  France  and  Germany,  and  since  then  the  Conti- 
nental nations  have  occupied  themselves  in  keeping  up  an 
armed  peace  at  an  expense  which,  though  undoubtedly  in 
the  present  state  of  affairs  necessary,  is  almost  equal  to  that 
of  actual  warfare.  All  their  conflicts  have  arrested  their 
industrial  development,  to  their  own  detriment,  but  to  Eng- 
land's great  advantage.  Not  content,  however,  with  that, 
they  increase  their  difficulties  by  a  dogged  protectionism.1 
As  a  result,  they  are  far  poorer  in  general  wealth  than  our 
own  land,2  and  only  succeed  in  competing  with  us  by  means 
of  underpaid  and  overworked  labour.  But  the  labourer  will 
not  always  consent  to  be  overworked  and  underpaid,  and 
signs  are  not  wanting  that  his  discontent  is  fast  ripening 
into  something  more  dangerous. 

§  259.  Present  Difficulties.      Commercial  Crises. 

But  although  English  commerce  has  reached  a  height  of 
prosperity  considerably  above  that  of  other  nations,  it  has 
not  been,  and  is  not  now,  without  serious  occasional  diffi- 
culties. It  has  been  throughout  the  century  visited  at  more 
or  less  periodic  intervals  by  severe  commercial  crises.  In- 
deed, very  soon  after  the  conclusion  of  the  Continental  War, 
a  severe  commercial  crisis  passed  over  this  country.3  It 
happened  partly  because  during  the  war  our  manufacturers 
had  accumulated  vast  stocks  of  manufactured  products,  and 
could  not  get  rid  of  them  as  quickly  as  they  expected, 
owing  to  the  financial  exhaustion  of  those  countries  whom 
they  expected  to  be  their  customers,4  and  partly  also 
because  foreign  countries  sought  to  protect  their  own 
almost  ruined  industries  by  imposing  prohibitive  duties 
upon  English  manufactures.  The  harvests  of  1816  and 
1817  were  also  very  bad  in  England,  and  these,  added  to 
the  causes  just  mentioned,  produced  a  very  severe  crisis,5 

1  Bastable,  The  Commerce  of  Nations,  ch.  ix.  (on  European  Tariffs,  1865- 
1890). 

2  Cf.  Mulhall's  Dictionary  of  Statistics. 

3  During  the  war  there  had  also  occurred  a  very  severe  crisis,  that  cf 
1810-11  ;  cf.  Tooke,  History  of  Prices,  i.  303  syq.,  and  iv.  273. 

4  Ib.,  ii.  8  to  12. 

8  Ib.,  ii.  77-79;  Craik,  British  Commerce,  iii.  219-224. 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       465 

which  reached  its  worst  point  in  1819.  Once  again,  in 
1825,  a  second  crisis  followed,  caused  by  the  too  rapid 
importation  of  raw  products  that  had  been  bought  at  a 
very  high  price,  and  by  financial  follies  in  speculation  in 
the  trade  with  the  Spanish-American  colonies,  that  seemed 
to  recall  the  days  of  the  South  Sea  bubble.1  In  fact,  this 
panic  is  often  called  the  second  South  Sea  bubble.  Ten 
years  afterwards,  in  1836  to  1839,  another  crisis  occurred, 
owing  chiefly  to  the  formation  of  numerous  joint-stock 
banks2  and  other  companies,  together  with  extravagant 
speculation  in  corn  and  tea.  During  the  forties,  however, 
our  commercial  condition  continued  to  improve,  and  capital 
was  rapidly  accumulated,  till  the  bad  harvest  of  1846,  com- 
bined with  speculations  in  grain,  and  the  high  price  of 
cotton,  caused  another  period  of  disaster,8  in  which  the 
cotton  industry,  in  particular,  was  severely  damaged.  The 
speculations  in  railways  were  also  remarkable  at  this  time, 
no  less  than  £500,000,000  being  raised  in  loans*  in  1847. 
The  country,  however,  recovered  once  more,  and  with  the 
discoveries  of  gold  in  California  and  Australia  in  1851,  a 
renewed  activity  was  seen  in  all  branches  of  trade.  As  the 
supplies  of  gold  increased,  English  exports  increased  also, 
since  they  were  eagerly  taken,  especially  by  Australia,  in 
return  for  the  precious  metals.  Nevertheless,  before  very 
long  another  crisis6  broke  upon  the  commercial  community 
(1857),  having  its  origin  in  North  America,  but  which 
extended  over  the  whole  commercial  world,  and  proved  very 
prejudicial  to  English  interests  on  account  of  the  close  con- 
nection between  our  country  and  the  United  States.  This 
time  our  iron  and  textile  industries  were  specially  affected  ; 
factories  were  closed,  and  blast  furnaces  extinguished,  and 
the  greatest  distress  prevailed  amongst  the  working  classes. 
But  once  more  the  nation  recovered  as  usual  ;  and  for 

1  These  colonies  required  capital  to  work  their  silver  mines,  and  this 
led  to  heavy  speculation  by  English  capitalists ;  cf.  Tooke,  i».  «.,  ii.  146, 
147,  159. 

•  Tooke,  u.  «.,  ii.  278,  303. 

*/6.,iv.  314  (railways);  Leone  Levi,  British  Commerce,  p.  310;  Pal- 
grave's  Diet.  Pol.  Econ.,  i.  459. 

*Dict.  Pol.  Econ.,  i.  459. 

8  Diet.  Pol.  Econ.,  i.  464  ;  Hyndman,  Commercial  Owe*,  ch.  v. 

2  o 


466  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

another  few  years  continued  to  prosper  till  the  cotton  in- 
dustry was  for  a  second  time  almost  ruined  by  the  effects  of 
the  Slavery  War  between  the  Northern  and  Southern  States 
of  America.  A  "  cotton  famine  "  occurred  in  Lancashire, 
when  800,000  wage-earners  were  deprived  of  their  live- 
lihood. This  caused  an  increase  of  cotton-growing  in  India, 
which  has  continued  since  that  time.1 

§  260.  Commercial  Crises  since  1865. 

But  once  again  this  industry  recovered  from  what  seemed 
to  be  a  very  severe  blow,  and  the  close  of  the  American 
War  in  1865  even  gave  a  further  impetus  to  new  business, 
while,  at  the  same  time,  considerable  developments  took 
place  in  our  trade  with  China,  India,  and  Australia.  But 
the  very  next  year  the  sudden  and  unexpected  failure  of 
the  great  bill-broking  firm  of  Overend,  Gurney  &  Co. 
caused  much  panic,2  not  only  in  financial  but  in  industrial 
circles,  though  the  ordinary  symptoms  of  crisis  were  fortun- 
ately not  apparent  in  the  trade  returns,  and  for  some  years 
our  prosperity  continued  to  increase,  till  a  crisis 3  of  truly 
international  magnitude  occurred  in  1873.  It  was  felt 
from  New  York  to  Moscow,  and  affected  the  trade  industry 
and  agriculture  of  all  intervening  countries.  It  was  due  to 
some  extent  to  the  great  financial  inflation  which  took 
place  within  the  German  Empire  after  the  payment  of 
£200,000,000  indemnity  by  the  French  to  their  con- 
querors, while  a  similar  inflation  prevailed  in  the  United 
States,  owing  to  the  rapid  growth  of  business  and  the  ex- 
tension of  railways  after  the  Civil  War.  England  escaped 
much  of  the  severity  of  this  international  crisis  (1873),4  but 
soon  afterwards  suffered  from  agricultural  depression,  and 
has  continued  to  do  so  since,  from  the  causes  mentioned  in 
a  previous  chapter.  During  the  last  twenty  years,  the  two 
most  severe  periods  of  crisis  have  taken  place  in  1882  and 

1  Hyndman,  Commercial  Crises,  p.  93. 

27*.,p.  95.  3/6.,ch.  vii. 

4  Though  two  great  failures — that  of  Collie  &  Co.,  in   1875,  and  the 
Glasgow  Bank,  in  1878 — showed  that  there  was  some  uneasiness. 

5  Hyndman,  Commercial  Crises,  chs.  viii.  and  ix. 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       467 

1890,  the  former  connected  with  the  failure  of  the  Union 
G£ne>ale  of  France,  combined  with  the  low  prices  and 
general  stagnation  of  trade  in  Great  Britain,  which  lasted 
till  1888  ;  and  the  latter  due  to  the  extravagant  specula- 
tion, especially  in  South  American  securities,  which  termin- 
ated in  the  difficulties  experienced  by  the  well-known  firm 
of  Baring  Brothers,  and  the  panic  which  followed  the 
discovery  of  their  unsafe  situation.  More  recently  still, 
the  increasingly  protective  M'Kinley  tariff  adopted  by  the 
United  States  has  had  a  depressing  effect  upon  many  British 
industries. 

§  261.   The  Eecent  Depression  in  Trade. 

Still  more  recently  (1895)  there  has  been  an  outburst  of 
speculative  activity  in  the  shares  of  South  African  gold- 
mines, and  some  derangement  has  occurred,  but  we  are 
assured  by  an  eminent  authority1  that  there  has  been  no 
absolute  panic  since  1866.  There  has  been,  however,  a 
very  long  period  of  depression,  beginning  about  1875  and 
gradually  growing  worse  till  1885,  when  a  Commission  was 
appointed  to  take  evidence  on  the  subject.  The  peculiarity 
of  this  depression  has  been  its  gradual  growth  and  con- 
tinuance, in  contrast  to  the  former  crises,  which  occurred 
after  periods  of  sudden  inflation,  and  passed  away  with 
comparative  rapidity.  The  evidence  of  the  Commission  of 
1885  showed  that  during  this  depression  wages  had,  on  the 
whole,  remained  firm,  and  that  the  incomes  of  those  in 
trades  and  professions  had  actually  increased,  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  profits  had  been  lowered,  and  the  rate  of 
interest  reduced.  It  was  agreed  by  most  of  the  witnesses 
before  the  Commission  that  there  had  been  much  over- 
production, and  though  this  is  true  to  some  extent,  it  would 
seem,  on  the  whole,  that  at  least  one  of  the  main  causes 
of  this  prolonged  depression  was  a  slow  but  radical  change 
in  the  relations  of  labour  and  capital,  causing  a  closer 
approximation  between  the  shares  of  the  total  product 

1  Mr  W.  Fowler  in  his  article  on  the  CVwe*  of  1857,  186«,  and  1890,  in 
Palgrave's  Diet.  Pol.  Bcon.,  i.  462.  The  articles  on  Critu  in  thia  Dic- 
tionary should  be  compared  with  Hyndman's  views  in  hia  book  above 
quoted. 


468  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

allotted  to  each.  It  is  also  probable  that  the  term  de- 
pression is  only  comparative  in  this  case,  and  only  shows  a 
falling-off  as  compared  with  the  abnormal  activity  of 
1871-74,  and  also  it  should  be  borne  in  mind  that,  though 
English  manufacturers  have  hitherto  had  a  considerable 
start  over  their  foreign  neighbours,  this  advantage  cannot 
be  expected  always  to  continue,  as  other  countries  will 
naturally  tread  more  closely  on  the  heels  of  our  own  in  the 
race  of  international  competition.  In  any  case,  however, 
there  is  no  immediate  fear  for  the  future  of  English 
industry,  although  individual  merchants  or  manufacturers 
may  suffer,  for  it  has  already  been  seen  above  (p.  461) 
that  the  volume  of  our  trade  is  by  no  means  yet  diminish- 
ing. But  there  are  certain  considerations  on  this  subject 
of  crises  and  depressions  which  are  of  a  more  general 
character. 

The  causes  of  such  depressions  in  trade  are  various,  and 
not  always  obvious.  They  are,  so  to  speak,  dislocations  of 
industry,  resulting  largely  from  mistaken  calculations  on  the 
part  of  those  "  captains  of  industry  "  whose  raison  d'etre  is 
their  ability  to  interpret  the  changing  requirements  in  the 
great  modern  market  of  the  civilised  world.  A  failure  in 
their  calculations,  a  slight  mistake  as  to  how  long  the 
demand  for  a  particular  class  of  goods  will  last,  or  as  to  the 
number  of  those  who  require  them,  results  very  soon  in 
a  glut  of  the  market,  in  a  case  of  what  is  called  "over- 
production," but  is  in  reality  merely  production  of  the 
wrong  things ;  and  this  is  as  inevitably  followed  by  a 
period  of  depression,  occasionally  enlivened  by  desperate 
struggles  on  the  part  of  some  manufacturer  to  sell  his 
goods  at  any  cost.  With  such  a  vast  field  as  the  inter- 
national market,  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  such 
mistakes  are  by  no  means  rare,  nor  does  it  seem  as  if  it 
were  possible  to  avoid  them  under  the  present  unorganised 
and  purely  competitive  industrial  system.  They  have  been 
aggravated  in  England  by  a  belief  that  our  best  customers 
are  to  be  found  in  foreign  markets,  while  the  importance  of 
a  steady,  well  established,  and  well  understood  home  market 
is  not  fully  perceived.  "A  pound  of  home  trade,"  it  has 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       469 

been  said,1  "  is  more  significant  to  manufacturing  industry 
than  thirty  shillings  or  two  pounds  of  foreign."  The  com- 
parison may  not  be  exact,  but  it  is  on  the  right  lines. 
Now  one  of  the  most  important  branches  of  our  home  trade 
must  be  the  supplying  of  agriculturists  with  manufactures 
in  exchange  for  food.  But  when  the  purchasing  power 
of  this  class  of  the  community  has  sunk  as  much  as 
£43,000,000  per  annum,2  it  is  obvious  that  such  a  loss  of 
custom  must  seriously  affect  manufacturers.  Again,  no 
small  portion  of  our  home  market  must  consist  in  the  pur- 
chases made  by  the  working  classes,  yet  it  does  not  seem 
to  occur  to  capitalist  manufacturers  that  if  they  pay  a  large 
proportion  of  the  industrial  classes  the  lowest  possible 
wages,  and  get  them  to  work  the  longest  possible  hours, 
while  thus  obtaining  an  ever-increasing  production  of 
goods,  the  question  must  sooner  or  later  be  answered  :  who 
is  going  to  consume  the  goods  thus  produced  ? 

§262.   The  Present  Mercantile  System.     Foreign  Markets. 

The  auswer  as  far  as  the  capitalist  is  concerned  seems  to 
be — foreign  customers  in  new  markets.  English  manufac- 
turers and  capitalists  have  consistently  supported  that 
policy  which  seemed  likely  to  open  up  these  new  markets 
to  their  goods.  For  a  considerable  time,  as  we  saw,  they 
occupied  themselves  very  wisely  in  obtaining  cheap  raw 
material  by  passing  enactments  actuated  by  Free  Trade 
principles,  and  removing  protective  restrictions.  Cheap  raw 
material  having  thus  been  gained,  and  machinery  having 
now  been  developed  to  such  an  extent  as  to  increase  pro- 
duction quite  incalculably,  England  sends  her  textile  and 
other  products  all  over  the  world.  She  seems  to  find  it 
necessary  to  discover  fresh  markets  every  generation  or  so, 
in  order  that  this  vast  output  of  commodities  may  be  sold. 
The  merchant  and  manufacturing  classes  have  supported 
and  still  support  this  policy,  from  a  desire,  apparently, 
rather  to  find  new  customers  than  to  keep  the  old ;  and, 
largely  for  the  sake  of  British  trade,  wars  have  been  made 

1  Thorold  Rogers,  Relation*  of  Economic  Science  to  Social  and  Political 
Action,  p.  10. 

*  Sir  J.  La  wen,  quoted  above,  p.  451,  note  1. 


470  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

on  China,  Egypt,  and  Burmah,  while  at  the  present  moment 
England  is  scrambling  with  Germany,  Portugal,  and  other 
powers  for  the  new  markets  of  Africa.  To-day,  indeed,  the 
industrial  history  of  our  country  seems  to  have  reached  a 
point  when  production  under  a  purely  mercantile  system  is 
overreaching  itself.  It  must  go  on  and  on  without  ceasing, 
finding  or  fighting  for  an  outlet  for  the  wealth  produced, 
lest  the  whole  gigantic  system  of  international  commerce 
should  break  down  by  the  mere  weight  of  its  own  im- 
mensity. Meanwhile,  English  manufacturers  are  complain- 
ing of  foreign  competition  in  plaintive  tones,  a  complaint 
which  merely  means  that,  whereas  they  thought  some  years 
ago  that  they  had  a  complete  monopoly  in  supplying  the 
requirements  of  the  world,  they  are  now  perceiving  that 
they  have  not  a  monopoly  at  all,  but  only  a  good  start, 
while  other  nations  are  already  catching  them  up  in  the 
modern  race  for  wealth. 

§  263.   Over-production  and  Wages. 

With  all  this,  too,  we  hear  cries  of  over-production,  a 
phrase  which  economically  is  meaningless  (except  in  so  far 
as  it  indicates  that  production  is  proceeding  in  the  wrong 
direction),  more  especially  at  a  time  when  very  large 
numbers  of  people  in  civilised  communities  are  daily  on  the 
verge  of  starvation,  when  the  paupers  of  every  civilised 
country  are  numbered  by  thousands,  and  plenty  of  people 
who  never  complain  have  neither  enough  clothes  to  wear 
nor  enough  food  to  eat.  Wages  are  certainly  better  than 
they  were  fifty  years  ago,  but  no  one  who  knows  the  facts 
of  the  case  will  deny  that  for  the  average  workman — I  am 
not  speaking  of  skilled  artisans  and  the  dite  of  the  working 
classes — it  is  practically  impossible  to  save  anything  out  of 
his  wages  that  would  form  an  adequate  provision  against 
old  age  or  sickness.  It  is  not  the  business  of  a  historian 
to  vituperate  any  particular  class,  but  he  may  justly  point 
out  the  mistakes  to  which  classes  have  as  a  matter  of  his- 
tory been  liable.  And  the  great  mistake  of  the  capitalist 
class  in  modern  times  has  been  to  pay  too  little  wages.  It 
is  an  old  agricultural  saying — quoted,  I  believe,  as  Arthur 


MODERN  INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       471 

Young's — that  one  cannot  pay  too  much  for  good  land,  or 
too  little  for  bad  land.  The  same  remark  applies  to  labour. 
Capitalist  employers  rarely  make  the  mistake  of  paying  too 
much  for  bad  labour,  but  they  have  constantly,  as  a  matter 
of  history,  committed  the  worse  error  of  paying  too  little 
for  good  labour.  There  are,  however,  signs  at  present  that 
this  state  of  things  is  being  altered.  But  at  the  beginning 
of  this  century,  as  has  been  shown,  the  coming  of  the 
capitalists  and  of  the  capitalist  factory  system,  beneficial  as 
it  was  ultimately  to  England,  was  followed  by  a  time  of 
unprecedented  misery  and  poverty  for  those  whom  they 
employed.  The  day  of  the  capitalist  has  come,  and  he  has 
made  full  use  of  it.  To-morrow  will  be  the  day  of  the 
labourer,  provided  that  he  has  the  strength  and  the  wisdom 
to  use  his  opportunities. 

§  264.   The  Power  of  Labour.     Trades  Unions 
and  Co-operation. 

For  the  labourers  of  to-day  are  a  very  different  class  from 
their  ancestors  of  fifty  or  seventy  years  ago.  They  have 
learnt,  at  least  the  most  advanced  among  them,  the  power 
of  combination,  a  remedy  which  at  one  time  was  forbidden 
them,  but  which  is  now  fortunately  once  more  theirs.  The 
steady  growth  of  Trades  Unions  and  of  Co-operative 
Societies  has  taught  them  habits  of  self-reliance  and  of 
thrift,  and  has  made  them  look  more  closely  into  the  eco- 
nomic conditions  of  industry.  These  unions  and  societies 
do  not  yet  embrace  more  than  a  small  fraction  of  English 
workmen,  but  they  contain  the  best  and  worthiest  of  them, 
and  their  members  are  able  to  preserve  a  certain  indepen- 
dence of  attitude  in  treating  with  their  employers.  1  •'. 
as  it  is,  the  gigantic  power  of  modern  capital  finds  itself 
occasionally  confronted  by  the  united  forces  of  modern 
labour.  But  these  occasions  are  rare,  and  more  often  an 
isolated  body  of  workmen  engages  in  a  futile  conflict  with 
superior  strength.  The  great  Dock  Strike  of  1889  showed, 
indeed,  what  power  the  union  of  labour  might  possess,  but 
the  success  of  that  famous  conflict  was,  after  all,  due 
to  other  causes  than  the  solidarity  of  labour,  and  many 


472  INDUSTRY  IN  ENGLAND 

subsequent  events  have  shown  the  weakness  of  the  workmen 
who  enter  upon  these  deplorable  struggles.  It  may  be 
deplored  that  the  relations  of  employer  to  employed  are 
such  as  to  necessitate  these  combinations,  but  it  cannot 
always  be  said  that  it  is  the  fault  of  the  labourer  if  the 
relations  of  labour  and  capital  are  somewhat  strained. 
Whether  he  looks  back  to  the  days  of  assessment  of  wages 
and  the  Law  of  Settlement ;  to  the  Statutes  of  Labourers 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  or  the  Combination  Laws  of  more 
modern  times  ;  whether  he  remembers  the  degradation  and 
horrors  of  the  first  factories  and  mines,  or  the  grinding 
misery  of  agricultural  life  after  his  common  rights  had  been 
taken  from  him,  and  he  and  his  children  worked  in  gangs  not 
so  well  cared  for  as  foreign  slaves — when  he  hears  of  all  these 
things  he  naturally  does  not  credit  the  employer  of  his  labour 
with  the  best  intentions  towards  him.  Nothing  is  so  wasteful 
and  nothing  so  dangerous  as  industrial  strife  ;  but  before  the 
labourer  can  fairly  be  called  upon  to  desist  from  it  he  must 
have  some  guarantee  of  his  own  industrial  freedom  and  safety. 
This  he  is  rapidly  gaining,  and  when  masters  and  men  re- 
cognise alike  the  identity  of  interest  and  the  equal  rights  of 
Capital  and  Labour,  the  industrial  history  of  England  will 
have  entered  upon  a  new  era  of  more  solid  prosperity. 

At  present  the  position  of  the  working-classes  has  been 
vastly  improved  in  their  political  relations,  and  there  are 
many  signs  that  they  are  using  political  means — as  other 
classes  have  done — to  gain  economic  ends.  The  spirit  of 
democracy  is  gaining  strength,  and  the  wave  of  democratic 
progress  is  washing  down  the  ancient  barriers  of  privilege 
and  rank.  Its  advance  has  been  welcomed  by  thinkers  and 
statemen  of  no  mean  order,  and  the  advent  of  political 
power  is  hailed  as  bringing  with  it  material  prosperity.  Yet 
there  must  remain,  even  in  the  minds  of  many  who  sympa- 
thise with  the  industrial  classes,  grave  doubts  as  to  the 
ultimate  benefits  of  a  popular  government ;  and  the  gravest 
doubt  of  all  arises  when  it  becomes  increasingly  evident  that 
the  advance  of  democracy  practically  involves  the  acquisition 
of  irresponsible  power  by  the  working-classes,  who  form 
already  the  majority  of  parliamentary  voters.  No  man,  and 


MODERN   INDUSTRIAL  ENGLAND       473 

DO  mass  of  men,  has  yet  been  found  tit  to  be  trusted  for 
long  with  such  a  power,  for  it  is  a  weapon  which  wounds 
equally  those  who  use  it  and  those  against  whom  it  is 
directed.  And  unless  the  working- classes  of  England  can 
learn  a  lesson  from  the  errors  of  their  former  rulers  in  the 
past,  there  can  be  but  little  hope  that  they  will  reach  the 
highest  level  of  national  prosperity  in  the  future. 

§  265.   The  Necessity  of  Studying  Economic  Factors  in 

History. 

For,  hitherto,  our  prosperity,  great  as  it  is,  has  frequently 
had  its  drawbacks,  and  has  passed  through  many  vicissi- 
tudes. Our  ancestors  and  ourselves  have  made  many 
mistakes,  and  till  recently,  as  we  have  seen,  the  growth 
of  our  national  wealth  has  been  slow.  But  a  study  of 
industrial  history  is  not  without  its  uses,  if  it  helps  us 
to-day  to  understand  how  we  have  come  into  our  present 
position,  and  what  faults  and  follies  we  must  avoid  in 
order  to  retain  it  Unfortunately,  few  historians  have 
thought  it  worth  their  while  to  study  seriously  the  economic 
factors  in  the  history  of  nations.  They  have  contented 
themselves  with  the  intrigues  and  amusements  of  courtiers 
and  kings,  the  actions  of  individual  statesmen,  or  the 
destructive  feats  of  military  heroes.  They  have  often 
failed  to  explain  properly  the  great  causes  which  neces- 
sitated the  results  they  claim  to  investigate.  But  just  as 
it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  growth  of  England  with- 
out a  proper  appreciation  of  the  social  and  industrial  events 
which  rendered  that  growth  possible,  and  provided  the 
expenses  which  that  growth  entailed,  so  it  will  be  impos- 
sible to  proceed  in  the  future  without  a  systematic  study  of 
economic  and  industrial  affairs.  For  the  great  political 
questions  of  the  day  are  becoming  more  and  more  economic 
questions.  We  have  only  to  look  round  Europe  to-day  and 
we  may  judge  from  the  occurrences  of  the  present  how  far 
economic  questions  are  in  the  forefront  of  politics.  Con- 
tinental nations  are  struggling  under  the  double  burden  of 
military  necessities  and  protective  tariffs,  and  are  trying  to 
find  a  market  for  their  protected  manufactures  by  an 


474  INDUSTRY  IN   ENGLAND 

aggressive  colonisation  that  is  increasingly  likely  to  involve 
them  in  international  difficulties.  France  has  sought  fresh 
colonies  in  Madagascar,  Africa,  and  the  Far  East ;  and  her 
interests  are  continually  clashing  with  those  of  England. 
Germany  and  our  own  country  are  face  to  face  in  Africa. 
Both  France  and  Germany  are  seriously  threatened  from 
time  to  time  with  violent  social  movements  connected 
largely  with  labour  troubles,  and  the  same  causes  are 
operating  in  Spain  and  Austria.  The  agricultural  crisis 
that  has  long  prevailed  in  Russia  only  aggravates  the 
general  financial  difficulties  of  that  much-disturbed  and 
much-disturbing  empire.  Every  foreign  power,  whether  in 
the  Old  World  or  the  New,  which  either  has  colonies  now 
or  intends  to  have  them  soon,  regards  England's  colonial 
empire  with  an  unceasing  jealousy,  and  does  not  even  attempt 
to  conceal  its  delight  when  any  difficulty  arises  that  may 
compromise  England's  position.  This  jealousy  is  the  natural 
feeling  of  the  poor  towards  the  rich,  and  of  the  debtor 
towards  the  creditor.  It  finds  its  economic  interpretation 
in  the  fact  that  England  has  planted  her  flag,  sold  her 
goods,  and  lent  her  money  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe. 
Yet  at  home,  with  all  our  riches,  we  have  reasons  for  anxiety. 
The  agrarian  difficulties  in  Ireland  have  proceeded  largely 
from  economic  as  well  as  from  national  and  political  causes, 
and  may  lead  us  into  an  expenditure  which  will  severely 
tax  our  industrial  resources.  The  Eight  Hours'  Movement 
has  already  developed  into  a  political  question,  and  industrial 
legislature  is  more  and  more  becoming  the  order  of  the  day. 
Our  relations  with  our  colonies,  and  especially  with  India, 
require  most  careful  treatment  upon  an  economic  basis. 
Commercial  and  industrial  considerations  must  weigh  more 
and  more  heavily  with  us  if  we  are  thoroughly  to  secure 
our  position  as  a  united  and  stable  empire.  They  are  not 
by  any  means  the  only  considerations,  yet  those  of  us  who 
wish  to  help  in  maintaining  and  in  forwarding  the  progress 
of  modern  England  must  seek  to  answer  clearly  the  economic 
questions  that  are  pressing  themselves  upon  us,  by  looking 
at  them  in  the  light  afforded  by  the  industrial  history  of  a 
great  industrial  nation. 


INDEX 


Aboriginal  races  of  Britain,  5 

Accounts,  agricultural,  118 

Agrarian  difficulties  (sixteenth  cen- 
tury), 211,  217 

Agriculture,  Celtic,  13 

in  Roman  period,  25  ;  early  in- 
fluences in,  27  ;  Saxon,  39  ;  later, 
99;  mediaeval,  112;  (methods  of), 
113,  116,  185  ;  (sixteenth  century), 
211,  247 ;  (seventeenth  century), 
265 ;  writers  on,  268  ;  (eighteenth 
century),  270;  (agricultural  popu- 
lation), 331,  335;  (modern  agric.), 
427,  ch.  xxv. ;  (revolution  in),  480 ; 
(protection  in),  485 ;  (improve- 
ments), 436;  (depression  in),  439- 
445 ;  (prices  of  produce),  440 ; 
(agric.  capital),  443  ;  (value  of 
land),  451  ;  (revival  of),  452 

Allowance  system  of  relief,  408,  413 

Alfred,  46 

America,  discovery  of,  218 ;  colonies 
in,  285,  289,  295,  366  ;  war,  867- 
870  ;  (civil  war),  463 

Antwerp,  228,  230 

Apprentice  system,  95  ;  (Elizabethan 
law),  259  ;  (in  factories),  388 

Arch,  Joseph,  449 

Arkwright,  343 

Assessment  of  wages,  253-259,  281 

Assiento  contract,  289 

Assize,  139 


B 


Bailiff,  114,  174 

Bakewell,  429 

Banking,  299;  (Bank   of  England), 

800,  822,  874 
Barter,  48 
Bordars,  72 
Bounties  on  corn,  438 
Brickmaking,  816 
Bright,  John,  on  factory  acts,  405 
Bronze  age,  8 
Bye- industries,  325,  329;  (loss  of),  885 


Cabot,  198,  218 

Canada,  295 

Canals,  355 

Cape  Colony,  462 

Capitalists,  rise  of,  824 

Capitalist  manufacturers,  325,  326, 
381 

Cattle,  ancient,  7 ;  improvements  in, 
271 

Cartwright,  344 

Celts  in  England,  5,  8  ;  (Pytheas  on), 
11-14 

Chancellor,  Richard,  281 

Changes  in  fifteenth  century,  192 

in  sixteenth  century,  220 

Charters  of  towns,  91 

Charter,  the  Great,  101 

Chartists,  377 

Children  in  factories,  888-402 

Closes,  115 

Clothiers,  147 

Coal  and  coal  mining,  310-312,  853, 
423 

Cobbett,  376 

Cobden,  460 

Cockayne's  monopoly,  306 

Coke  of  Holkham,  429 

Colonies,  290,  293,  295 ;  (policy  to- 
wards), 364  ;  (American),  366  ;  (war 
with),  368  ;  (trade  with),  461 

Columbus,  193,  218 

Combination  Acts,  416 

Commendation,  53,  61 

Commerce  in  sixteenth  and  following 
centuries,  284-304,  and  tee  Trade 

Common  fields,  115,  273 

Communal  ownership,  see  Manor 

Communal  land,  115 

Communication,  improvements  in, 
354  ;  (recent),  468 

Co-operative  societies,  471 

Copyholders,  88 

Corn  laws,  432,  435 

Cottars,  72 

Cotton  manufactures,  846 

Counties,  population  and  wealth  of, 
87-69 

47S 


476 


INDEX 


Crises,  commercial,  464-468 

Crompton,  343 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  286 

Crusades,  100 

Cultivation,  methods  of  (Saxon),  40 

Currency  (under  Henry  VIIL),  206  ; 

(Elizabeth),  235;   (William  III.), 

300 

Customary  tenants,  56 
Customs  tariff,  375 
Cuxham  Manor,  79 


Dairy,  115 

Danes,  43-45,  61 

Darby,  Abraham,  314 

Darien  scheme,  301 

Debasement  of  currency,  206 

Defoe  on  commercial  men,  322 

Dock  strike,  471 

Domesday  Book,  65-85 

Domestic  system  of  industry,  336 

Drainage  of  fens,  268 

Drainage,  agricultural,  436,  437 

Drake,  231,  232 

Drawbacks  of  mediaeval  life,  177 

Dudley  and  iron  trade,  313 

Dutch    (in    agriculture),    249 ;     (in 

trade),  287  ;  wars  with,  287 
Dunstan,  St,  41 
Dyeing,  131,  305 


E 


Early  Britain,  people  of,  10 ;  condi- 
tion of,  11 

East  India  Co.,  285,  293,  463 
Economic  factors  in  history,  473 
Edward  III.  and  manufactures,  127; 

and  staple,  136 
Edward  VI.,  209  ;  his  ministers,  209, 

234 

Elizabethan  seamen,  221,  231 
Elizabethan  England,  234-263 
Enclosures,   119,    213,   215 ;   results 
of   (sixteenth    century),   216-218 ; 
(seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies),  274  ;    (benefits  of),   275  ; 
(number  of),  335 
Enumerated  articles,  the,  366 
Exports,    early,    15,    32 ;    (Norman 
period),  100  ;  (sixteenth  century), 
240  ;  (later),  297,  455,  457 


Factory  Acts,  391-406  ;  (summary  of), 

403 

Factory,  germs  of,  146 
,  early,  347  ;   increase  of,   348 ; 

life  in,  388 
Factory  system,  results  of,  381,  388  ; 

factory  agitation,  391-405 
Fairs,  42,  140 
Famine,  151,  178 
Farmers,  see  Agriculture 
Fens  drained,  268 
Feudal  system,  60,  98 
Fifteenth  century  changes,  193 
Finances  (Ed.  VI.),  210,  219,  220 
Firma  unius  noctis,  54 
Firma  burgi,  90,  188 
Fitzherbert,  171 
Flanders,  trade  with,  229 
Flemish  weavers,  105,  121,  127,  129, 
Flemish  immigrants,  241 
Foreign  trade  (Saxon),  43  ;  mediaeval, 

223-233  ;  (sixteenth  century),  240  ; 

(seventeenth  century),  297  ;  (later), 

455, 457 
Forests,  17,  313 
France,  291,  293 
Frauds,  statute  of,  277 
Free  and  unfree,  38,  73,  76 
Free  Trade,  456 
Frobisher,  231 
Fuggers,  the,  210 


Gang-labour  in  agriculture,  449 

Geburs,  38 

Geneat,  37 

Gentry,  country,  182 

Gilds,  91 ;  merchant,  93  ;  craft,  94  ; 

functions  of,   95  ;    rural,   96 ;    in 

cloth  trade,  130  ;  and  towns,  189  ; 

lands,  confiscation  of,  207  ;  revival 

of  craft  gilds,  246 
Greshams,  the,  229 
Grossteste,  113 


Halifax,  237 
Hansa,  the,  124,  227 
Hargreaves,  James,  343 
Hawkins,  231 
Henley,  Walter  de,  113 
Henry  VII.,  193,  194,  196 


INDEX 


477 


Henry  VIII.,  expenses  of,  199  ;  popu- 
larity of,  201  ;  and  monasteries, 
202  ;  and  coinage,  206 

Huguenots,  in  England,  308 

Husbandry  (book),  118,  and  set 
Agriculture 

Huskisson,  456 


Imports,  16,  32,  45, 101,  143,  224-227, 
229,  297,  366,  455,  457 

Income  of  different  classes  (eighteenth 
century),  834 

Independence,  American,  369 

India,  285,  293 

Industrial  History,  3,  473 

Industry,  Celtic,  "12-14 

in  Roman  period,  81 

Intercursus  Magnua,  123 

Inventors  and  inventions  of  eigh- 
teenth century,  343 

Iron  age,  9 

Iron,  15  ;  (iron  trade),  313,  353 

Isolation  of  villages,  41 


Jack  of  Newbury,  147 
Jews,  103 


Labourers,  statute  of,  153,  165 
Labourer,    condition    of   (fourteenth 
and  fifteenth   centuries),   172-179; 
(Elizabethan   period),   251  ;   (eigh- 
teenth and  early   nineteenth  cen- 
turies), 407,  421 ;  (agricultural),  447 
Land,  sentiment  about,  322 

,  kinds  of  in  a  village,  82 

,  labourers  and  the,  445 

Landowners  and  the  Plague,  156,  164 
Landowners,  services  of,  427 
Large  and  small  holdings,  157 
Lords  of  the  manors,  70 


Machinery  and  hand  labour,  383-385 

Manchester,  237 ;  Manchester  Mas- 
sacre, the,  377 

Manor  and  manorial  system,  47-61, 
70,  78;  decay  of,  85,  211 

Manorial  courts,  55,  80 

Manual  industry,  816 

Manufacturers,  small,  326 


Manufactures,  104,  121,  125;  (for- 
eign), 126  ;  (and  politics),  132  ;  (in 
Elizabethan  period),  237;  (later), 
305,  309  ;  (domestic  system),  886 

Manufacturing  population,  327 

Manures,  437 

Markets,  42,  107,  138  ;  (foreign),  469 

Mark  theory,  the,  48  ;  (criticism),  49 

Marshes,  18 

Mary,  Queen,  234 

Mayor,  188 

Mercantile  theory,  the,  859-364 

Mercantile  system,  the  present,  469 

Merchants  and  politics,  138 

Merton,  statute  of,  214 

Methuen  treaty,  302 

Middle  Ages,  close  of,  180.  194 

Migration  of  population  from  South 
to  North,  350 

Mining  (early),  9 ;  (Roman),  31  ; 
(mediaeval),  815  ;  (later),  816  ; 
(eighteenth  century),  352 

Monasteries,  dissolution  of,  202-205 

Monopolies  (of  towns),  289  ;  (other), 
242-246  ;  (Cockayne's),  306 

Municipal  institutions,  189 


N 

Navigation  Acts,  287,  456 

Neolithic  age,  6 

Nobles,  181 

Norman  period,  summary  of,  108 

Norwich,  125,  129 


Oastler,  893 

Origin  of  the  manor,  58 

Over-production,  470 


Papal  exactions,  128 
Paris,  Treaty  of,  293 
Pauperism,  195,  205,  219,  260,  410, 

422 

Peel,  Robert,  459 

Physical  features  of  early  Britain,  17 
Pilgrimage  of  Grace,  203 
Plague,  the  Great,  151-160 
Plagues,  178 
Piers  the  Plowman,  162 
Pigs,  89,  116 
Piracy,  146 


478 


INDEX 


Pole,  Wm.  de  la,  137 

Politics  and  industry,  321,  358,  376, 
418 

Poor  Laws,  205,  260,  411,  412 

Population  (in  Domesday),  66,  106, 
112 ;  (Elizabethan),  263  ;  eigh- 
teenth century),  332,  349-352 ; 
(decline  of  rural),  445,  446 

Ports,  89,  107,  144 

Pottery  trade,  314,  338 

Poultry,  116 

Prehistoric  influences,  4 

Productivity  of  soil,  272 

Progress,  149 

Prices  of  provisions  (mediaeval),  175 

Protection  in  agriculture,  434,  435 

Pytheas,  11-14 


Q 

'  Quia  Emptores '  Statute,  158 


R 

Railways,  458 

Raleigh,  231 

Reform,  parliamentary,  379 

Regulation  of  prices,  139 

Rent  (in  kind),  75  ;  rise  of,  213  ;  (in 
seventeenth  century),  267 ;  later, 
279  ;  (eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries),  428 

Revolt,  the  Peasants',  161-172 

Revolution,  the  Industrial  (eighteenth 
century),  323,  341  ;  (and  French), 
342,  371,  379  ;  (political  results  of 
industrial),  378,  418 ;  (in  agricul- 
ture), 430 

Richard  II.,  166,  170 

Roads  and  Rivers,  16 

Roads,  Roman,  22 

,  mediaeval,  354 

(eighteenth  century),  355 

Romans  in  Britain,  21-31 

Roses,  Wars  of  the,  132,  195 


S 


Sadler,  M.  T.,  397 

Salt,  42 

Saxon  period,  34,  46 

Scotland,  Union  with,  302 

Seebohm,  F.,  referred  to,  51 

Services  of  tenants,  74 

Settlement,  Law  of,  415,  416 


Shaftesbury,  Lord,  399,  403 

Sheep,  117 

Sheep  farming,  118,  185,  216,  248 

Silures,  6 

Six  Acts,  the,  377 

Sixteenth  Century,  summary  of,  220 

Slave  trade,  45 

Slaves,  72 

Social  comforts,  250 

Sokemen,  75 

Somerset  the  Protector,  209 

South  Sea  Bubble,  303 

Spain,  wars  with,  285,  289,  291 

Speculation,  303 

Spinning,  6,  14,  425 

Speenhamland  "  Act,"  409 

Staple,  the,  135,  136,  137 

Steamboats,  458 

Stock  and  land  lease,  114,  186 

Stock,  116 

Stone  age,  6 

Stourbridge  fair,  143 

Supremacy  of  England,  recent,  4 

Survival  of  ancient  population,  35 


Taxation,   99  ;    (on  wool),  123  ;   (in 

the  Continental  War),  373 
Telegraphs,  458 
Ten  hours'  day,   agitation  for,  397, 

404 

Tenants,  classes  of,  112 
Thegen,  37 

Tories,  321 ;  (and  factory  acts),  405 
Towns   (Roman),   23  ;    (Saxon),  42 ; 

(Domesday),    69  ;      later,     86-97  ; 

origin   of,   86 ;   privileges  of,    89 ; 

town    life    (mediaeval),    90,    134  ; 

decay    of,    145 ;    constitution    of, 

187  ;  decay  of,  190  ;  new,  191 
Townshend,  Lord,  429 
Trade,  Free,  456 
Trade,  early,  15  ;   in  Roman  times, 

31  ;      foreign      (Norman),      100 ; 

foreign    (fourteenth    to    sixteenth 

century),  224  ;  (sixteenth  century), 

240  ;     (seventeenth  century),  297  ; 

(in  1820),  455  ;  (recent),  455,  457, 

461  ;  (depression  in),  467 
Trades  Unions,  419,  449,  471 


U 


Union  of  Scotland  and  England,  302 
Unions,  Trades,  see  Trades  Unions 


INDEX 


479 


Venetian  fleet,  225 

Verulamium,  33 

Village  life  in  eighteenth  and  early 

nineteenth  centuries,  328-331 
Village,    Saxon,     37  ;    (in    Norman 

period),  80 

Village  communities,  57 
Villages,  industrial,  146 
Villeins,  72, 77, 150, 159  ;  (revolt  of), 

168,  171 
Vinogradoff,  referred  to,  52 


Wage-earning  class,  111,  150 

Wages,  (mediaeval),  173,  175  ;  (six- 
teenth century),  253  ;  (assess- 
ment of),  253 ;  (in  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries),  281  ; 
(in  nineteenth  century),  424 ;  (agri- 
cultural), 447  ;  (recent),  470 

War,  the  Continental,  870,  372  ; 
cost  of,  373,  424 

Wars  of  nineteenth  century,  463 

Watt,  James,  345 


Wealth,  distribution  of  (counties), 
67,  107 

Wealth  and  wars  of  England,  356 

Weaving,  6,  14  ;  (Flemish),  105  ; 
(sixteenth  century),  238  ;  (inven- 
tions in),  344 

Wedgewood,  315 

Whigs  and  Tories,  321 

Wiklif,  163 

William  III.,  289 

Willoughby,  231 

Winchester  fair,  142 

Wool  and  politics,  121 

Wool,  113,  120  (and  ch.  ix),  124, 
305,  309 

Woollen  manufacture  and  trade,  120; 
(ch.  ix),  805,  309 

Working  classes,  set  Labourers 

Worsted  trade,  129 


Yeomen,  157,  183  ;  decay  of,  276 


Zealand,  New,  462 


PRINTED    BY 

TURNBULL   AND  SPEARS, 
EDINBURGH 


A     000738790     5 


